Kangaroo Office Coinage (Queen Victoria Bust)

I've moved your topic to the Australian subforum for you.

There is very little about these items that is known with full certainty. The tokens are generally classified as "patterns", struck by W.J. Taylor in London with the aim of lobbying either the Victorian government or the Colonial Office in London for permission to issue such tokens as circulation coinage. No permission was forthcoming and it is uncertain if it was ever even formally applied for as there are no government records of such a request being made. Production records are nonexistent; Roth (writing in 1892) reports that he was verbally told by former workers for the Taylor mint that they were struck sometime around 1855 and that patterns were made in gold, silver and copper.

They come in two basic types: milled edge, and plain edge. It is assumed, judging by their scarcity, that the milled edge ones were the original 1855 pattern strikes and the slightly less rare plain edge examples are slightly more recent restrikes (perhaps dating from some time in the 1860s). There are also mules of the shilling, in copper, with the obverse of another Taylor design which was produced in the early 1860s. A London coin collector by the name of John G. Murdoch apparently commissioned the restrikes as several examples (including gold) were found in his estate.