BL-8 Blacksmith Token Very Fine (VF-20) hole $

BL-8 Blacksmith Token Very Fine (VF-20) hole

According to McLachlan, in about 1835, a blacksmith in Montreal began to make his own halfpennies to pay for liquor. He made counterfeits of the battered, worn-out, old English and Irish regal halfpennies of George III. His dies were purposely left unfinished in order to create the appearance of a badly worn token. His halfpennies were then artificially darkened, probably by overheating, to create the illusion of age. Only a crude outline of the type was cut, without a date or legend. A peculiarity of these pieces is that the types are almost always reversed because the die-sinkers cut the types on the dies to face the same way as on the tokens they used as models. These pieces were accepted in trade because of the insatiable demand for small change in Lower Canada at the time, particularly in Montreal.

BL-8 Variety:
Obverse: Laureate bust of George III, eyebrows flush with forehead, the neck merges into the chin and the mouth is open. The back of the head is incomplete. The loops of the bow are small and the ribbons are of equal length.
Reverse: Harp facing left with seven strings. The die is badly cracked.

Specifications:
Composition: Copper
Weight: 3.2 to 5.4 g
Diameter: 27.2 to 27.5 mm
Die Axis: ↑↓
Edge: Plain

Information provided by the 2023 Canadian Colonial Tokens, 11th Edition, Edited by: Clément Chapados-Girard, Published by: Mark Drake