2 Pence Norwich - Robert Blake 1811-1815

Giant copper coins (and tokens) are quite popular with some collectors. Britain of course issued "cartwheel" twopence coins in 1797, that were about the same size and weight as this token. But that copper twopence is not the largest in the copper token series; Birmingham Workhouse struck copper threepences for circulation (weighing 68 grams!), and experimented with copper sixpences.

The largest copper "coins" were, of course, struck by Sweden in the 1600s and 1700s - Sweden had lots of copper, but very little silver and gold, so they attempted to create a copper-based monetary system. Their largest "coins" were known as plate money, giant ingots of pure copper weighing up to 20 kilograms. If you've never seen or heard of them before, just Google the word "platmynt".

Needless to say, such giant chunks of copper weren't popular with the people who actually needed to use them for money.

Wow, I'd like to purchase one of the Swedish "platmynt" coins. A search is showing rather large copper clods. Holy moly.

I have several large 2 pence and cartwheel coins, and also one of the Birmingham Workhouse tokens.

There are others in silver...Turks & Caicos Islands 50 Crowns, or Panama 20 Balbaos, or German Federal Republic had a 3 Ducat in 1960, etc., among others I've found over the years. Don't know why, but these just fascinate me.

Going in the other direction, I have a model 1/8 Farthing (can you imagine such a thing...1/8th of 1/4th), The Panama "pill", the Russian Polushka, the little Peruvian Dineros, Canadian 5 Cents, etc. I particularly like the smaller denominations of farthings, have several 1/3, 1/2, etc.

Now I'm off to see if I can afford one of those Swedish honkers. Cheers all.