3 British Tokens 1792-1801, + A Collection of Links to my Exonumia posts from other Forums

[DonnaML]

Now that I know there's an Exonumia forum, and because I don't believe I have the ability to move my old posts and threads about medals and other exonumia from other forums to this one, I thought I'd do the next best thing and post some links here for the record and in case anyone's interested. They're roughly in reverse chronological order.

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/5462-donnamls-top-12-french-coins-and-medals-for-2023/

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/5453-donnamls-top-11-british-coins-and-medals-for-2023/

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/1893-donnamls-top-world-medals-for-2022-9-british-5-french/#comment-32964

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/4698-american-bi-centennial-bronze-medal/#comment-59673

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/5300-two-napoleon-medals-depicting-josephine-marie-louise-on-the-occasion-of-the-new-ridley-scott-movies-release/

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/5180-new-british-coronation-medals-william-iv-queen-adelaide-ar-1830-victoria-ae-1838-anne-ar-1702/

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/1810-new-90-mm-and-now-a-100-mm-french-art-deco-medal-by-paul-marcel-dammann/

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/3689-two-new-british-coronation-medals-ar-george-iv-1821-plus-charles-i-scottish-coronation-1633/

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-6870

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-8121

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-9635

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-9837

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-9846

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-9852

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/403-napoleon-bonaparte-coins-on-the-anniversary-of-waterloo/#comment-9940

https://www.numisforums.com/topic/899-new-british-coronation-medal-queen-charlotte-1761/#comment-15752

Plus this one, which I believe I've posted before only in the "Post it and Pick it" thread:

Great Britain, Ireland, Anti-slavery halfpenny token, 1795 (AE 30 mm., 9.4 g.), catalogued as No. 1039a at p. 304 of P. & B. Withers, The Token Book: British Tokens of the 17th 18th and 19th Centuries and their Values (Galata 2010). Obv: African slave kneeling right, hands raised together in chains, AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER / Rev. Clasped hands, MAY SLAVERY & OPPRESSION CEASE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD (rosette before legend)/ Edge: PAYABLE IN DUBLIN CORK OR BELFAST.

And these two, which I previously posted only together with coins depicting elephants:

Pidcock farthing token from the period 1795-1801 (Dalton & Hamer/Withers 1067), depicting a cockatoo on the reverse:

Coventry Halfpenny token with the date 1792, depicting Lady Godiva on the obverse and an Elephant and Castle on the reverse. See Withers/Dalton & Hamer 231; ill. Withers p. 345. There are apparently a number of different edge inscriptions; mine says "PAYABLE AT THE WAREHOUSE OF ROBERT REYNOLDS & CO."

 

 

Edited January 11 by DonnaML

[panzerman]

Beautifull medals! Esp. the last two😍

[John Conduitt]

36 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

I don't believe I have the ability to move my old posts and threads about medals and other exonumia from other forums to this one

Yes this would be really useful. I'm not sure why you can't edit the forum as well as the post.

Beautiful tokens. Here's another Pidcock.

Pidcock Halfpenny Conder Token, 1795

Birmingham. Copper, 29mm, 7.04g. Toucan; TO THE CURIOUS OBSERVERS OF NATURAL PHENOMENA. Two-headed cow standing right; EXETER CHANGE LONDON STRAND (D&H Middlesex 454). Issuer Gilbert Pidcock was a menagerist and showman. He exhibited the two-headed cow in January 1791 at the Lyceum in the Strand in London.

[Broucheion]

Hi All,

I posted this on CT a while back.

Copper French Napoleonic Medal - Br 1348.
Plain edge, original strike. 41 mm By Andrieu
Bramsen #1348 1814: The victories of February 1814; Laskey #135
 

 

Obverse: Head of Napoleon, laureate. NAPOLEON EMP. ET ROI.
Reverse: FEVRIER MDCCCXIV. An eagle perched on a thunderbolt, facing left, a star above his head. In the left field a pair of fish; in the right a flying Victory holding out a wreath. Signed beneath the thunderbolt, BRENET F., DENON D

This medal celebrates the February successes Napoleon had against the invading armies; the fish are, of course, the zodiacal sign of Pisces. Encouraged by his success, Napoleon rejected offers of the allies to leave him in possession of France and continued fighting. March was disastrous. Napoleon sent a message to his brother Joseph in Paris, telling him to hold on, and explaining that Napoleon was marching east to pick up more troops from the besieged forts there. The message was intercepted; the allies seized the opportunity to attack and occupy Paris.

Laskey's 1818 image:

 

- Broucheion

 

 

[JeandAcre]

@DonnaML, I took longer than you did stumbling onto the Exonumia forum --not to mention this thread!

Your Abolitionist Conder is brilliant.  Hard to imagine that for the type, let alone the series, it's less than exceptional.

Mine was bought too long ago even to have dealer's pics.  But it's much more worn than your example; no one's missing a whole lot.  Except that, while it has the same cool legend around the rim, it's also the variant that renders 'OPPRESSION' with one 'P'.

...So, sadly enough, the best I can do is by way of what's already a repost, even though it's still a recent acquisition.  As such, a welcome upgrade to one that's only more worn than my Abolitionist one.  --Yes, with another cool rim inscription: 'BIRMINGHAM W, HAMPTON > OR LITCHFIELD (the protagonist's home town).

Right, for anyone who's seen the intial post, this will be reiterative.  ...So why not just launch right into it.

Especially in his later career, as documented in Boswell's Life, Samuel Johnson was an already prescient, reflexive abolitionist.  Relative to the younger, conventionally Whig Boswell, the irony is that Johnson's Toryism was already rapidly fading from fashion.  But it provided the political context for his antipathy to mercantilism and every form of colonial (and, by easy transition, post-colonial) exploitation.  As early as 1770, leading up to the American Revolution, his pamphlet, Taxation No Tyranny (a concept which has hardly lost relevance), he wrote: 

We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?  https://www.samueljohnson.com/tnt.html 

Then there gets to be this, from the Oxford 1-volume edition of the Life (p. 946, under Wednesday, 15 April 1778).

From this pleasing subject, he, I know not how or why, made a sudden transition to one upon which he was a violent aggressor; for he said, ‘I am willing to love all mankind, except an American:’ and his inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire, he ‘breathed out threatenings and slaughter;’ calling them, ‘Rascals — Robbers — Pirates;’ and exclaiming, he’d ‘burn and destroy them.’ Miss Seward, looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, ‘Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those whom we have injured.’ — He was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach; and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantick. During this tempest I sat in great uneasiness, lamenting his heat of temper; till, by degrees, I diverted his attention to other topicks.

Right, he was always ready --if not, sometimes, hard-wired-- to let his often (as here) valid moral objections morph into this level of antipathy.  At the same time, apart from the presence of refined feminine company in the room, it's hard for me not to read Boswell's rhetorical window-dressing ('violent aggressor' --really?) partly in terms of his own highly selective set of sensibilities.

Meanwhile, climbing down from all of that, your Pidcock's elephant and cockatoo, and Covenry Lady Godiva ...with Another elephant, are both stunning.  As are the rest of the ones folks have posted so far.  ...But, Yeah, I've looked at online examples of both of those.  Since you folks have 'em, maybe it gets to be good enough if I don't.

 

[Bonshaw]

@DonnaML, I find your exonumia fascinating, as well as many of the others posted here.

Could you please say something about what the boundaries are on your exonumia?  Is there a particular date range in scope?

Is Essaie money relevant here? 

Example - this is one of mine, a model crown from 1848 that I like a lot - it has bicolor gilt. I'm wondering if this is in scope of this Exonumia forum?

[DonnaML]

On 4/10/2024 at 10:27 PM, Bonshaw said:

@DonnaML, I find your exonumia fascinating, as well as many of the others posted here.

Could you please say something about what the boundaries are on your exonumia?  Is there a particular date range in scope?

Is Essaie money relevant here? 

Example - this is one of mine, a model crown from 1848 that I like a lot - it has bicolor gilt. I'm wondering if this is in scope of this Exonumia forum?

@Bonshaw, I think your 1848 model crown, and other model and pattern coins, definitely count as exonumia and fall within the scope of this forum. Regarding your question about the scope of the exonumia I collect, tokens like the three posted above aren't really my main focus -- I have only a small handful. But I've been collecting British historical and commemorative medals (including but certainly not limited to coronation and other royal commemorative medals, medals dealing with the Napoleonic Wars from the British viewpoint, and City of London medals), mostly in silver and bronze/copper plus some in white metal, since the 1980s -- long before I began actively collecting ancient coins.

I also have a few German (Prussian) historical medals (all issued before World War I), and collect a couple of types of French medals: historical and commemorative medals issued from the French Revolution to the fall of Napoleon, and so-called "art medals," particularly Art Nouveau medals issued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Art Deco medals issued mostly in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Separately, I've also collected British coins on and off for the last 40 years or so, and have posted many of them in the "World Coins" forum here.

Edited April 12 by DonnaML