Found In 10 Cent Junk Box

These came from a British soap company known as Pears (Now owned by Lever Brothers).
They decided to advertise their product by stamping their name on circulating coinage. However, there was a law in Great Britain prohibiting the defacing the monarch's portrait or any part of a coin, so the use of British coins for advertising was not possible.
The company president came up with an idea, and ordered about 250,000 copper 10 Centime coins from France, which in the late 1800s were the same size as a British penny and were generally accepted as pennies in Britain. These French coins were counterstamped in large, bold letters, "Pears Soap,"
These pieces circulated widely for a few years before the Parliament decided that such pieces were unlawful and ordered them confiscated and destroyed. Fortunately, enough escaped destruction and are widely accepted and traded among collectors today.

And a clever tactic on the part of the manufacturer.

Random counterstamps are ok and all but ones like this with a known history are just awesome

Approx. 10 times more with the stamp

I believe I averaged higher than that on the 6 I purchased. I was being pretty aggressive in my bidding at the time though :)

Hi Chequer

I have paid as much as $38.53 for a Pears soap. I am trying to collect all dates/mintmarks of French 10 Centimes, so I will go "all out" for a coin I need!

Also some of my purchases go back to the 1980's, so my average is probably a little low.

Today on ebay you can expect to pay $15 on average (price plus s/h) of course date/condition can make it go up or down.

I do know I will NEVER pay as little as $.10 as I did for my very 1st Pears! Of course I had no idea of what it was at the time.

I will be posting photos of the 5 Pears that I have on non-10 centime French coins in the future.

They are:
British Half Penney
(2) French 5 Centimes
Italian Copper
US Large Cent

I hope to write an article soon on Pears Soap counterstamps and will post it on this site.

Cheers
--Jim