Britain's Most Exotic Sixpences - My Bodacious Birmingham Behemoths

Without delving into the all the socioeconomic problems and international conflicts of the Regency Period in Britain, those of us who specialize in that era are very familiar with all the poorhouses and workhouses that issued copper and silver tokens as a way to help keep everyday commerce from shutting down in the absence of any "small change" minted by the Crown. Alongside the "emergency coinage" put into circulation by such institutions in Worcester, Sheffield, Leeds, Keighley, Bradford, etc., some of the most widely-seen and most frequently encountered tokens - then and now -- were minted in great volume for the Birmingham Workhouse.

The circulating Workhouse tokens of the Regency Period included copper pennies (issued 1812-14), threepence tokens (1813 only) and silver sixpence and shillings (1811-12). A rare silver halfcrown token appeared in circulating as well, matching the uniform obverse and reverse designs of all the others, but the Overseers of the Workhouse announced in August 1812 that it was a fabrication from some unknown party. It's now considered one of the top rarities of the 1811-12 silver token series, and I wish I had one in my collection.



Another rarity stands out among the Birmingham Workhouse tokens: their big copper monster, a new sixpence token contemplated for release in 1813. Weighing in at 147g (5½-ounces!), and 50mm across and 10mm thick, it bears a closer resemblance to a hockey puck than to any of the coins and tokens we normally expect to encounter. As described [ungrammatically, alas] in a 1998 Noble ---- auction catalog, "The Overseers of the Poor thought with the relatively low price of copper and high price of silver prevailing, it would be more economical to produce these large coins, however their excessive weight created an insurmountable obstacle to their continued use and the number of the issue was extremely small."

How small? Well, for the original issue, you would need only two hands to count the total output, which is why calling it a "pattern" makes a lot of sense. But there were two other issues, also produced in tiny quantities, leaving us collectors with three varieties to pursue, not counting the three unique gold and silver examples struck as specimens.

As for scarcity, S.H. Hamer of Dalton & Hamer fame wrote in The Numismatist (1911): ".seven genuine specimens are known, and there is an imitation [with] nothing to indicate that it is not an original specimen. The known rarity of the genuine specimen induced an individual to have a pair of dies cut and a number of specimens struck. Thirty-two in copper were struck on thick flans, and six on thin flans.about one-thirtysecond of an inch larger in diameter.
.all the thick [imitation] specimens in copper, apart from six, have been defaced by filing across, and the dies mutilated so that no more can be struck."

Modern catalogers suggest that as many as ten specimens of the original copper 6d token may now be accounted for. Of the 32 thick imitations - which, by the way, are 45mm in diameter and thus 5mm and a half-ounce shy of the originals - there are only six full-blooded survivors, the other 26 having been cut-canceled. Only six of the thin imitations were reportedly struck, and no one to my knowledge has published any speculation as to how many have survived to this day.

Although I've accumulated these three "excessively rare" Birmingham Workhouse copper sixpence tokens over a number of years, I've finally brought them together for the first time just so I could practice on them with my new camera, an iPhone 14 Pro.

In the first and second photos below, the one in the center is the thin imitation (Withers 376a, Davis 30), and the other two are the thick imitation (W376, D29). The one on the right is my cut-canceled example, shown by itself in the third photo below. At the top, solely as a size reference, is an uncirculated one penny token (W395, D41), and at bottom a threepence (W80, D34), which is the same diameter as the 6d, but half the thickness.




Your questions and comments on the tokens -- and critiques on the photography -- are most welcome!

Happy Holidays to all ~
Tom