Tokens And Special Purpose Coins Of New Zealand

That is impressive, nice lustre too.

That coin really is the most elaborate of all the tokens being 1880s, a world away from the primitive early tokens I have been showing lately. It shows the evolution over the 25 of so years they were issued.

Hobday and Jobberns Penny Token 1874 - 1876

The last of my 5 new tokens (I am already watching some more, so don't expect things to go dead and special shoutout to yarm who has hit the ground running with their first token, easily the nicest one seen on the thread so far).


Obverse - "Hobday and Jobberns, Drapers, Waterloo House, Christchurch"


Reverse - A shield that shows a tunnel at top with a device showing a horse's and cattle's head with a wheatsheaf in the middle, below a chevron is a plough, Advance Canterbury in the scroll.
"Stokes & Martin Melbourne" at bottom.

I will discuss the technicalities of this piece first before getting into Hobday and Jobberns themselves.

This is a very interesting token from my home city Christchurch, significantly later than the other 4, it would still be considered an early one. It is a copper token, 34mm in size and weighing 14 grams. This is bizarre given that this planchet went out of use for coins in 1860, yet was still being used for Australian and New Zealand token making.

Stokes were a cheaper and generally more average producer of tokens than Heaton or Taylor and other British token makers. However it is still an adequately made piece, the use of the shield is very significant as it shows the progress Canterbury the province had already made by the 1870s, where a railway tunnel from Lyttelton had been bored through the 500m high Port Hills to link it to Christchurch in 1867. The Railway network spread quickly so that towns on the plains could get wool, beef and wheat to the ships in Lyttleton quickly. Canterbury was proving it did not need gold to be successful.

There is a discrepancy over when this token emerged. Some like Roker say it was 1873 whilst the Bertrand Catalogue listing says 1874 to 1876. Either way it seems mid 1870s is a good guess.

My coin is close to VF, but does have some pretty bad verdigris as expected. As with many Christchurch tokens, quite a few have been excavated from the sites of these shops after the 2011 earthquakes. In many cases the buildings destroyed were well over 100 years old.

There are 2 major varieties, one with the makers name and one without. Also on the writing side, a second variety has the A in Waterloo above the H.


Source -https://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/photos/disc4/IMG0003.asp

Waterloo House - This building dates from the late 1880s (Earlier history below), the one referred to on the coin is likely an earlier wooden structure that burned down. Photo is from 1898 when it was incorporated into the Ballantynes family of stores. This was Chch's biggest store then and now. There was a very nasty fire in 1947 which killed 41 people and destroyed all these 1880s and 1890s masonry buildings. A new store opened by 1960 on the corner and is still there now after the 2011/12 earthquakes.

Hobday and Jobberns were Drapers and like many of these token issuers were quite a big company. Yet despite this we know little about them. What we do know is they advertised in papers in the 1870s and in October 1888, a fire in the ironing department ended up burning their building down and it ended the company. The building in the photo was built after it.


Christchurch Star ad from 1874 with a big advertisement for them, explaining the buyers going overseas (This is Ashton level competition here).

I managed to find some more about Daniel Jobberns, being born in 1845 in Kings Bromley Staffordshire and emigrating to Invercargill in 1867, by 1870 he was in Chch and started a Drapery store with Mr Hobday. Previous he worked as a travelling salesman for a firm in Sydney. After the 1888 fire, things went pear shaped and he was an undischarged bankrupt by 1891 (The great long recession).

After 1891 he moved back to Sydney and died there in 1923.

Managed to find a partial shot of the Hobday and Jobberns building!




Look to the far right on the horizon - Notice "Hobday Drapers"

The photo was taken in 1884 or 1885 and is from a block away. It shows that the building was quite large and likely masonry or at least 2 stories. The sign makes it prominent at least.

Just brought 4 more tokens, although 2 are different types of makers already described.

Without further ado, the new tokens include 1 in high grade and 3 I brought on special, each with a different fault. I have these tokens mainly to show you all, what 90% of them really do look like.




I had already shown a Hurley Halfpenny earlier in the thread and decided to add this Penny to my holdings. It is the same design as the smaller coin, but a much nicer example.

Minted in bronze like many later tokens and only 31mm in size weighing almost 11 grams, it is still larger than the pennies of the time. It is undated and is likely from around 1875.

This example is a full VF and near the better end of these tokens. It was the one full price coin, rim knocks and light verdigris are actually fine on these tokens and VF catalogues at $80 - so for $49 for this one, I think I did okay.
The next ones are the 3 el cheapo ones for $57 ($19 each coin).

Next is another United Service Hotel penny




This coin is very darkened and stained with verdigris making it a faulty coin - but it has a high degree of detail and better than my other USH coin (Page 4). It is probably VF/gVF under the gunk. It was likely a coin that spent time underground or probably recovered from one of the many wells dug out in the city.

There was a mass of building demolitions in Auckland city in the 1980s and 1990s, which meant salvage archaeology and a 3 story building from the 1880s was a market in hippie times was demolished and an 1870s well was found underneath. In this well were numerous tokens thrown in there(Possibly after they were outlawed in the 1880s or merely destroyed as they were all corroded?). This well was close to the United Service Hotel.

The other location was a well under the 1928 Smith and Caughey building, which was on top of an 1890s theatre and a soft drink (Aerated waters) factory was there before it. (The 1928 building is visible in the photo on page 4).

The other difference is the words "United Service Hotel" are in horizontal rather than bowed lettering. With these tokens the worded side is rough, but the portrait of the Queen is very skilful and as good as the one on British coins.

All of these reject tokens I paid just $19 each for them, that is extremely cheap for these tokens.

The next token is not so bad, it just has a worn flat centre on its Reverse. It still was cheap which is good, considering its a more scarce one!

Edward De Carle - Grocer and Merchant, Penny, Dunedin 1862.


Rev: Shield with British royal arms, logo and garter belt, Lettering top left to right "De Carle & Co, Merchants", Bottom left to right "Dunedin, Otago"


Obv : Image of Justice blindfolded holding scales on wharf, seaside scene with cornucopia and bundles (Seen it all before).
Lettering "Vivant Regina" "1862"

This coin is copper, yet only 31mm in size and was struck by W.J Taylor in London. Quality of striking is very good.

De Carle wrote a letter to the Otago Witness in 1862 asking the penny tokens would be worth only a halfpenny and that was all they were to be accepted for (Roker page TN17). We don't know how much they ended up being redeemed for.

There are 3 types based on die cracks, mine is the A type with a small crack on the rim below the last A in"REGINA". Others feature a die crack at the first V and another under the scales.

Edward De Carle was a real wheeler dealer in Dunedin, being a grocer, a Land Auctioneer and Auctioneer and seller of "Spirituous Liquors". He was apparently also doing all this back in Melbourne during its gold rush and came to Otago when it found gold in 1861.

Digging into details, it seemed De Carle followed the gold! Born in London sometime in the 1820s, he arrived in Melbourne in 1849 and issued several tokens in Victoria, all with quasi royal themes showing lions, crowns and Latin inscriptions. This was his only New Zealand token, but our Australian friends will know of at least 3 major token types of his issued between 1853 and 1857.

https://collections.museumsvictoria...rticles/1926

This page has a brief history of him and his dealings in Australia with images of his Australian coins.

I intend to start Australian token collecting a bit later, as their token history ties into ours and De Carle is the good example of the Aussie who gained some sense and became a Kiwi!

Despite all of this we have no idea of what he looked like except descriptions of him being big and fat!

He also apparently laid out and invested much money into Footscray and Brunswick suburbs and there are De Carle streets in Melbourne.

Gaisford and Edmonds Butchers, Christchurch - 1875



Reverse: Words - "Gaisford &Edmonds, Pork, &General, Butchers, Colombo Street, Christchurch, New Zealand


Obv - Same image of Justice with cornucopia and sailing ship "New Zealand, 1875"

This coin is obviously very corroded and shows signs of having been buried in the ground, likely for at least 100 or more years (Many of these Christchurch tokens were dug out of the basements, wells or cess pits from old buildings demolished after the 2011 earthquakes). Again this is a cheaper token I brought for realistic purposes (I intend to buy high quality examples at a later date).

The 34mm copper token was minted by W.J. Taylor Mint in London - for the era an extremely primitive token - the Justice image had been used since the 1850s and the currency had been bronze since 1860, so to have copper tokens in 1875 is like having flared pants and disco music for sale in 1988.

It is also a fairly scarce token with a VF one costing around $100, so $19 for a corroded VG one is not too bad. We know very little about Gaisford or Edmonds, but both had separate Butchery shops in 1866 according to a trade directory. By 1875 they were in Colombo street, which was the main business artery of Christchurch then and now.

https://collections.museumsvictoria...rticles/1973
More info and what the token looks like in a better state.

Christchurch in the 1860s and 1870s was full of come and go tradesmen, there were frequent fires, arguments, burning down shops for insurance scams and all sorts of dirty dealings (Hobday and Jobberns etc) and hence why no one knows much about either of these men.

That concludes my latest group, but I have 3 more tokens arriving, one which is another Christchurch one, but has a hole in it and 2 foreign tokens, one widely used in New Zealand and Australia.

Next I may do some summaries of everything I have so far.

One final point is the use of & (Ampersands) on these coins, I read somewhere they were only invented in 1837 - so this is a very early widespread adoption of them.