No Idea What This Is, Or Where To Post It.

Great Britain 1797 penny or twopence. The penny is 36mm in diameter and weighs 28.35g (1 ounce) and the twopence is 41mm in diameter and weighs 2 ounces. Yours looks to be in VG / borderline Fine. although better than most - these coins are made of pure copper and most specimens have edge knocks.

https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces1287.html

These coins have a fascinating history. In the reign of George III there was a shortage of both copper and silver, and increasing costs made it uneconomical to make low value coins. In the early 1790s numerous local merchants started striking private tokens to alleviate the shortage of small change. To counter this, the British Government gave a contract to Matthew Boulton, who ran the private Soho Mint in Birmingham, to produce large numbers of copper 1d and 2d coins dated 1797. At the time it was believed that the metal content of a coin should be equal to its face value, so the penny weighed one ounce and the twopence two ounces. The copper twopence was the largest British coin ever issued for circulation, and no more were struck after this issue.

And here is a twopence with counterstamps on obverse and reverse. Wonder why.

Interesting that from the link above it lists the value for VG higher than that of F.

Am I mental? lol (it's possible)

Looks like I have all of the pennies you want (Canadian) as well as others dating back to 1858 if you were in need of those as well. I haven't looked at the rest of your list yet.

Those 1797 pennies and tuppences were known as "cartwheels" because of their size. They have a place in coin history as the first state coins produced by steam power. Boulton did make some tokens before that, however.

The cartwheels were sometimes used as weights for scales.

@jimbucks -

Here are my speculations about your countermarks.

In Britain in the 1830's and 40's British copper coins were increasingly countermarked as advertising pieces. This was made illegal by an Act of Parliament in 1853. In 1860 the whole lot of copper coins were demonetised and replaced by bronze coins. This introduced a loophole for the advertisers, as the 1853 Act only applied to current coins. So after the change advertising countermarks appeared on the pre 1860 coppers as well as foreign coins.

I looked up W PARTRIDGE in "British Countermarks on Copper and Bronze Coins" by J Gavin Scott, Spink 1975, but could find no mention. Internet searches produce ads which suggest West Indies connections, but with no details supporting the suggestions. Interestingly, I found an ebay add with what appeared to be the same coin, down to the positioning of the countermarks. There is mention of a RICHARD PARTRIDGE advertising countermark but I cannot say if it is linked.

Here is my tuppence worth, or Two Cents worth for US readers.

I don't think the countermarks relate to the West Indies for the following reasons. In Fred Pridmore's wonderful ( and costly ) work "Coins of the British Commonwealth of Nations, part 3 West Indies", he shows numerous examples of countermarks. They are all on non-British coins. The countermarks serve to identify the island of issue and/or the value, which this one does not.

The style of this countermark resembles more closely the later advertising countermarks which circulated in Britain. I note that W PARTRIDGE appears three times on the coin in what appears to be a haphazard manner. I wonder if it is a post-1860 test piece where somebody experimented with making the countermarks. I cannot account for the HI ( or IH ? ). Those initials don't seem to match any used for a West Indian island.

I hope my thoughts provoke further discussion. I would love to be enlightened.

@NumisRob

The cartwheel 2d was the largest regal coin circulated, but there was a larger token. The 1813 Birmingham workhouse 3d token is a behemoth!