My Anticosti Island Token: After 150 Years, Are We Still Totally Clueless?

It seems I didn't check far enough back in time. Since in the Charlton 1978, the #250 is a Sou Bouquet. After further checking, I just saw that it has the reference #299 in this edition.

But you are right, because I just checked for example the Charlton 1970, Charlton 1975, and even the Charlton 1977, and it is indeed this token at #250.

Sorry for the confusion. I never noticed that the reference #'s had changed in 1978 for the last regular edition of the Charlton containing the colonial and post-confederation tokens (I think?). I continue to learn everyday...

Interesting how the word "Anticosti" is in quotations.

For coins with uncertain or disputed origin, vested interests can get in the way of impartial discussion.

For a non-Canadian example: the Griquatown tokens of South Africa. These tokens are undated but he legend of their issue gives an 1815 date. They are highly valued because, if the legend is true, they would be "South Africa's first coinage". However, it seems highly unlikely that the Griquatown tokens ever actually saw circulation in South Africa; they are most likely a more modern concoction, made in Britain some decades after their purported issue and never being seen in South Africa until some decades further after that. However, the people who own these tokens, and the dealers who have them in stock and are trying to sell them, don't appreciate it when this is pointed out, as losing their "first coins in South Africa" status will likely see them drop in value. A few years ago, the Krause catalogues de-listed the Griquatown tokens from their main catalogues and shifted them over to the "Unusual world coins" listing.

I suspect something similar is happening with these tokens. Nobody who's paid good money to own one on the basis that they are "Canadian tokens" is going to like it if they hear logical arguments that "they're just play money" or "they're from Latin America", as acceptance of these theories will mean loss of interest and value.

My main issue with these being anything-Canadian is the denomination. 1/8 of what? A penny? "Pennies" as in British pennies, were long gone from Canada in 1870. And then there's the size: 1/8 of a penny is a half-farthing. Half-farthings are tiny things, and while I can't find any online dimensions for the Anticosti token (weight and size), all indications of these Anticosti objects is that they're way bigger than a typical half-farthing. Nobody makes tokens that are bigger and more expensive to make than the actual coins they are nominally replacing.

I'm not really buying the "Paris Mint Honduras pattern" theory either. That "A" is way too big to be a French mintmark. The Paris Mint's "A" is usually small and subtle.

I think a careful study of known provenances is required. Find out where and when they all first appeared on the marketplace. The "Anticosti shipwreck theory" sounds good, if it can be demonstrated that most of them originated from Eastern Canada. However, that would also make the original incorrect attribution of "A for Anticosti" a seriously improbable coincidence; far more likely is that they came from some other shipwreck, somewhere else in the world entirely.

Earlier today Sap said something about this so-called token that drove me back into my "vast holdings" so I could run this comparison:
Anticosti Island 1/8 Something: 1.7g, 14mm
Great Britain 1/2 Farthing: 2.35g, 18mm

All that establishes, of course, is that the Anticosti piece is closer in diameter to the GB 1/3 Farthing, which is 15mm, and its weight (because it's thicker than the 1/3 Farthing) is about midway between the third- and half-farthings. None of that is important in real life unless you know which country (if any) or "entity" commissioned the striking of this token. Without that, the "denomination" of 1/8 continues to be meaningless.

My further poking around the internet turned up a couple of mentions of the Anticosti Island token as "specious," as a "mint piece de caprice" and as a pattern.

To cite one source in particular, this paragraph from the June 1969 ANS summary "Numismatic Literature, No. 82" is a brief abstract by Willey of a Bowman article that appeared in a the January 1969 Transactions of the Canadian Numismatic Research Society.



Meanwhile, Sap, it's intriguing that you shoiuld draw the analogy to the 1815 Griquatown Unusuals, as I've been speculating (quietly, to myself) that the Anticosti 1/8-something might have been some low-rent mint's idea of a sales piece. The coincidence here is that my analogy was to the 1890 and undated Griquatown pennies, which appear to have been just that: patterns or demonstration pieces that a German mint used in trying to drum up business in the Transvaal's Boer settlements. I addressed that topic a little (with photo) just a few months ago here: http://goccf.com/t/301479&whichpage=225. (Dated 05/15-2021.)