A fascinating window into the last decade of the 18th century in , when small merchants and shopkeepers produced their own coins, will be given at an auction where some will go under the hammer as part of a spectacular collection. Merchants, booksellers, library owners and more in Kent all used the 'tokens' which they had made after the official currency 'vanished' due to a copper shortage during the war with France. As part of the collection called British 18th Century Tokens, there is the delightful one from Appledore, which features a windmill, and the words 'peace, innocence and plenty' on the back.
There are others from Deal and Dover, and each has fascinating stories behind them. Many merchants in Kent used their own coppers, particularly in Canterbury, along with Sandwich, Romney Marsh, Dover, Hythe, Dymchurch, Brookland, Tenterden, Staplehurst, Lamberhurst and Goudhurst near Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone, Benenden, Deal, Faversham, Hawkhurst, Sheerness and Chatham. The auction is at Baldwin's Auction House in Strand in London on Monday, October 7 and the collection represents many British counties as well as "throwing colour" on the usage of coinage across commercial industries and enterprises of the time.
It describes these home grown coins as "truly of the people, by the people, for the people". The promotion of the auction says this about the birth of the coins. "In the 1790s there was no official small copper change in the country.
Britain was at war with France and .
