Post Your Coins Or Medals With Industrial Imagery

commems, I accept your challenge!

Here's a British one-penny token, dated 1812, from Roscoe Place, Sheffield, Yorkshire. The issuer was Shaw, Jobson, & Co., whose many factories are shown behind the wall on the obverse. Among their products were candlesticks, edging tools, fenders, fireplaces, irons, stove grates, etc.

Withers 1047, Davis Sheffield 141-143.

@daltonista: Great! I plan on sitting back and enjoying your show!

Cool piece! I'd never heard of a "hydraulic blowing machine" before. I guess I need to get out more!

Great examples!

owatchman, I've figured out the potter, the sculptor, and the bricklayer, but can you tell us what those other people are doing so industriously?

Meanwhile, from the world of early 19th-century British exonumia, my contribution for today is this 1812 one-penny token issued by John Bunn, whose iron mill was located at Weybridge on the River Wey in Surrey. He also had a warehouse at Dowgate Wharf in London that handled the distribution of his product line, which was comprised predominantly of hoops for barrels and casks.

I've included a third photo just to highlight the eccentric, almost ornamental, diecutting that distinguishes the reverse legends on this piece, which was allegedly engraved by P. Wyon and struck by the noted medallist Edward Thomason at his Birmingham "manufactory."

Withers 1200; Davis 5 (Surrey); 33mm, 18.4g.

Looking good!

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure myself. I would guess that it's part of the brick making process, such as gathering the raw materials to make into actual bricks.

Most of us who grew up in the English-speaking world have long known the phrase "carrying coals to Newcastle" as an idiom for pointlessness and redundancy. Issued in 1812 by a Newcastle jeweler and silversmith named Alexander Kelty, this silver shilling token circulated primarily in the Northumberland and Durham areas of England, where coal had been the dominant industry ever since the 14th century.

The token shows a wide-angle view of an unidentified mining operation on one side and the arms of Northumberland featuring a pair of hippocampi, four castles, and a lion on the other. As we look at the mine, we can see in the foreground a horse or donkey led by a human on foot and pulling a cart configured as a coal hopper, just like the ones the railroads used when they arrived on the scene close to 30 years later. Most of the coal from this area, however, was shipped via barge on the River Tyne, which may appear to the left in the background of this token's little mining vignette...looks possible, and the geography of the area is right for it, but I'm unable to confirm that even at 20x magnification.

Newcastle-on-Tyne, Northumberland: Dalton 8; Davis 8.