19th Century, Ireland, 19th Century: ‘Slap Token’, a worn Shilling-sized coin, countermarked on one side with a bird’s head in a cartouche and an unidentified incuse countermark resembling an arrow-head, and on the other side countermarked TT within an oblong indent, together with three other small marks, one resembling a fleur-de-lis, 4.11gm (Pridmore, SNC Nov. 1958, pp.230-1, this piece; cf. M. pp.168-70; cf. Seaby TJ10). Undertypes worn flat, countermarks fine, extremely rare (£90-120)

Ex Pridmore (Pt. I, lot 501, part) and Ford (Pt. I, lot 338, part).

Sold with photocopies of Pridmore’s article on the coin (SNC Nov. 1958), an article by R.N.P. Hawkins on two similar ‘slap tokens’ with bird’s heads (SNC Nov. 1960), and a page from Jackson’s Silver and Gold Marks of England, Scotland and Ireland, where the TT on the coin is identified as the mark of the 19th century Dublin silversmith, Thomas Tudor.

Tudor’s mark is known on silver hallmarked from as early as 1797. He was known to have been a manufacturing and retailing silversmith, and in the latter capacity would have used small change in his shop, which is possibly the reason why he, and others (cf. Macalister, p.169), uttered countermarked coins in order to validate them for circulation