How Far Back Can We Go? Sixth Edition! Ended At 1380 Waiting On 1379

A pair of imitation 1773-dated halfpennies.

The first is reasonably heavy, but the engraving is haphazard and the strike is terrible. Despite that, it still would have probably passed in circulation.

The second is nearly Uncirculated, relatively speaking, but overstruck on an unknown token or coin, possibly either a colonial US issue or a Palmer (mail coach) token.

Note the wide variations in the date and lettering, as well as the general features of the bust and of Britannia.

1772 -- Principality of Furstenberg-Stuhlingen, 1 kreutzer:

Excellent!

An equally well-worn 1772 A 1/3 Thaler from Prussia...



...and a Louis XV Sol from 1772, minted in Lille (W) if I remember it correctly.

1771 -- Kingdom of Denmark, 1 skilling:

Fantastic coin. I had guessed those critters were foxes, but Numista says sables.

They are in fact sables!

It is a reference to the fur trade, and the prized furs from Siberia...and also a not-so-subtle reference to the reason Russia wanted to conquer and annex Siberia in the first place.

Here is a 1771-dated evasion halfpenny from Britain.

Prior to the King's imposition of harsh penalties on forgers, the counterfeit (imitation) halfpennies had mostly the same legends as their regal counterparts.

After the Royal Act which made counterfeiting punishable by death (!) the counterfeiters could no longer directly copy the same legends, so they had to get creative -- they had to look reasonably close, not too hard with high rates of illiteracy, but that left a wide margin to work with...

This is a common evasion type: it has GREGORY III PON / BRITAIN RULES instead of GEORGIVS III REX / BRITANNIA as expected. The 1771 date is a farce; this coin would have been struck in the late 1770s or early 1780s in my opinion. Later evasion issues often have 1780s dates just to make absolutely sure no one could confuse them with a regal halfpenny, the striking of which had ended in 1775.

(Pope Gregory III died in 741, so the most likely reason for using his name in the legend was the close-enough resemblance to the real King's name.)

1770 -- Republic of United Netherlands / Holland, 2 stuiver: