'Regal' Halfpenny?

[Phill Strange]

Hi!
Even tho I've been collecting UK coinage for 20+ years certain terms still confuse & one of which is 'Regal (Non)Regal Halfpenny' what dose this mean?

[EWC]

Even tho I've been collecting UK coinage for 20+ years certain terms still confuse & one of which is 'Regal (Non)Regal Halfpenny' what dose this mean?

Hard to say without any context. 

My guess would be that "Regal" refers to 18th century official issues of halfpennies, from the tower mint.  If so I would tend to avoid the term, as it obscures the true facts. It is estimated that eventually as much as 92% of the supposed Geo II & (especially) Geo III halfpennies in circulation  were fake.  And to call them "non-regal" seems to me to deliberately mislead, if that is what being done.  They should be called fakes.

One of my numismatic heroes, a London coin dealer, Snelling, published the first collector's catalogues of English copper coins in 1762, and used it as platform to attack exactly  this monetary laissez fair government policy.

Rob

[malj1]

Non-regal halfpennies refer to the series of imitations made in the 18th century during the shortage of current regal coinage.

The best listing of these coins can be found in James Atkins catalogue of 18th century tokens where almost 500 different types are listed.

Here is a random page taken from that book.

[FosseWay]

My understanding is similar to Malcolm's - "regal" halfpennies/farthings are those issued by authority of the government and minted by the Royal Mint; generally they have the king's head and name, D.G. REX or similar on one side, and Britannia and the word BRITANNIA on the other.

Non-regal equivalents are the "evasive" coins - the ones that look superficially similar but not sufficiently so to warrant a charge of forgery - but arguably also a good deal of the trade and municipal tokens issued during that time. These didn't try to deceive (or pander to familiarity, if you want to give the evasions' creators the benefit of the doubt) but they essentially fulfilled the same function in many cases.

Direct counterfeits are something else. I wouldn't call a fake £1 coin a "non-regal" type; it's a forgery of a regal type made purely with the intention of deceiving. That doesn't detract from their collectability IMV - just that I'd not lump them in with the tokens and other non-regal issues.

[malj1]

Yes that's  it exactly. 

I should have mentioned they were known as "evasive" coins along with the other remarks you have given.

[EWC]

Direct counterfeits are something else. I wouldn't call a fake £1 coin a "non-regal" type; it's a forgery of a regal type made purely with the intention of deceiving. That doesn't detract from their collectability IMV - just that I'd not lump them in with the tokens and other non-regal issues.

Good to see we completely agree on this.  Phill never clarified my query about context - so I did a bit of ebay detective work myself.  Here is a rather full explanation of what is going on, (in my judgement).

The cessation of copper coin issue followed a petition from a meeting of what were called 'considerable traders' in London on Friday, 25th January 1754.  For the most part, the gap in the money supply for small change thenceforward - that ran until Boulton's issues of 1797 onwards - was filled from three sources.  Traditionally in British collector circles these have been called

1)  Tradesman's tokens

2)  Evasives

3)  Fakes – (especially of the smallish issue of the official coppers of the 1770's)

Many of the tokens are quite readily available.  I put together a small general interest collection of twenty or thirty in the 1980's paying GBP 1 each.  The evasives – which Malcolm lists – always have been rather sought after, and were already more expensive in the 1980's.  Expect to pay GBP 20 today unless you get lucky.  The fakes exist in huge numbers – back in the 1980's if you paid 50p each you could have filled a bucket, if not a lorry, with them.  I recall this because I had a discussion with a dealer expert at the time.  We both agreed that quite a lot of money might be made buying them up in the UK and selling them in the USA – where some genuinely did circulate in the late 18th/early 19th century.  (Note:  I have never done this!).

I believe in the 1980's I first heard the strange term "Conder tokens" applied to "British 18th century tradesman's tokens".  This had the merit of brevity and the demerit of being plucked almost out of thin air  (I believe it comes from a catalogue than nearly everyone had forgotten, written by a guy called Conder?  Seems to be an American invention?)

Getting to the beef – I now find a bunch of people on ebay selling "George III evasive or non-regal Halfpennies"   These are what I, Fosseway and the British Museum call "Fakes".  Prices for these seem to be in the range GBP 15 to 25. 

Collecting these fakes is without doubt a worthwhile thing to do, but the way to do it via ebay surely would be to look at the pieces sold by novices as genuine official issues, as plenty of them are fakes, and even nice ones seem to be selling at a lower price than the absurdly named "non-regal" offerings

Rob

[constanius]

This is one of the best descriptions re counterfeit copper coinage in Britain and its use in America, it also includes Evasives.

http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/CtfBrit.intro.html   

[FosseWay]

Collecting these fakes is without doubt a worthwhile thing to do...

Especially if you collect by date, as you get non-existent ones! I have a 1777 British halfpenny and a 1783 Irish one, neither of which should exist.

I've never paid anywhere near £15 for one though - although I'm not that fussed about condition providing there is enough left of it to attribute it certainly and (preferably) it doesn't have ugly gouges, holes or discoloration. Honest wear - even quite a lot of it - doesn't bother me, especially in a piece of the age we're talking about here.

[EWC]

This is one of the best descriptions re counterfeit copper coinage in Britain and its use in America, it also includes Evasives.
http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/CtfBrit.intro.html   

Thanks Pat.  Perhaps an even more useful recent source is the 2008 book by George Selgin – "Good Money":

http://store.mises.org/Good-Money-P519.aspx

which using 300 pages inevitably covers more aspects of this whole affair.  I recommend the book - but urge it is read critically.

Powerful vested interest influenced government over abandonment of  copper coin production in 1701 and again in 1754.  Much of what happened is shrouded in mystery, and much of what we think we know comes from people who were in fact lobbyist associated with those interests.  In my own view, the grocer's guild was heavily involved in selling goods through shops on credit, and thus, by stopping copper coin issue they could disadvantage their cheaper independent rivals operating at fairs and markets, who needed to be paid and quit in cash at point of sale. 

IMO Prof Selgin quite rightly takes a stand in favour the coin and token using independent sector of trade, but I feel he draws a veil over what some of the big merchants were up to.  He is quite open about his links to Cato, a present day political lobbying group.  As I say, there is some excellent scholarship in the book, but it needs to be read critically.

For comparison I just looked at the UK book by Glyn Davis.  (He too has had some interesting connections – being sponsored by the Julian Hodge Bank.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1467379/Sir-Julian-Hodge.html)

But Davis seems less scrupulous in his scholarship than Selgin.  Note that on page 288 of his "History of Money" Davis claims that in the 18th century the Wilkinsons issued token coins "mostly of iron and copper".

Has anyone ever heard of Wilkinson's tokens in iron?  I never did.

Rob

[malj1]

Wilkinson was an ironmaster but of course he issued copper tokens.

I have a few non-regal halfpennies all are very worn having seen extensive circulation. Some are too poor to copy but here are two better ones.

GULEILMUS SHAKESPEAR rev. BRITONS RULE 1791

GLORIUVS III.VIS rev. BRIT1 rest unreadable

[malj1]

Non-regal Farthings too are to be seen. These are very thin showing that they are imitations rather than fakes.

These two are almost illegible but the reverse of the second must be BRITONS RULE

[EWC]

Non-regal Farthings too are to be seen. These are very thin showing that they are imitations rather than fakes.

Yes - I would call them fakes - but they are not like the sort of fakes we see from other periods - which got passed either via skill of manufacture, or skill in the passing itself.  To the extent that these circulated, it would be because there is no viable alternative available at the point of transaction.

Odd to note that, as I understand it - others were complaining to parliament that they had huge excess stock of (genuine?) coin that they could not move..........

Rob

[FosseWay]

Odd to note that, as I understand it - others were complaining to parliament that they had huge excess stock of (genuine?) coin that they could not move..........

Stocks of what, though? The Cartwheel coins were unpopular because of their weight. It could be that official sources wanted to distribute them but found that people tended to prefer the lighter weight earlier coinages, including the various imitations, evasions, straight-out forgeries and similar-sized trade tokens. If people were confident that their non-regal coinage would be accepted in payment, there would be no incentive for them to instead use giant pennies and twopences just because the government said so.