Tickets and Passes, Important British Trade Tokens, Coin Weights

Birmingham, Samuel Garbett, Hancock’s so-called uniface trial Halfpenny, in silver, bust right, edge plain, 9.24g (DH 125a). Extremely fine and toned, of the highest rarity (£800-1,000)

Provenance:
M. Rasmussen FPL 8, Summer 2005 (168).

Samuel Garbett (1717-1803), entrepreneur, political lobbyist and coinage reformer, chairman of the Birmingham Commercial Committee, was a close friend of Matthew Boulton. His attitude to tokens was somewhat guarded and it is generally thought that he rejected the trials made for him by J.G. Hancock in the late 1790s (Dykes, BNJ 1999, p.177; Dykes, SNC June 2005, pp.169-72, August 2005, p.246)