British Trade Tokens, Tickets and Passes, Numismatic Books

17th Century, Sarah Thomas, Halfpenny, 2.02g/12h (Boon 129; D Wales 91B). Flan bent, fair, very rare (£100-200)

Provenance:
Found at Blyth, Nottinghamshire.

This token was given to Wales by the late George Boon. His reasoning probably centred round three factors: the surname Thomas, common in Wales; the god save the king legend, a Royalist sentiment expressed on some other tokens from Monmouthshire; and that an example was in the D.W. Dykes collection, now preserved in the National Museum of Wales. However, at least one other specimen has been found in the Nottinghamshire/Yorkshire vicinity in recent years and in all probability the token belongs to Yorkshire. A Sarah Thomas has been located in those parts of the hearth tax records published by the Ripon Historical Society as resident in Halifax in 1672