The R C Bell Collection of British Trade Tokens

R C Bell

We are particularly pleased to offer in this auction the distinguished collection of over 1,800 British trade tokens formed by Mr R.C. Bell, MB, FRCS, of Gosforth, Newcastle on Tyne.

Robert Charles Bell was born on 22 November 1917 at Sudbury, Ontario. He came to England from Canada in August 1928, and was educated at Haileybury and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London. During the War he served with the British Emergency Medical Service, followed by a spell in the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1945 to 1948. He returned to England to take up a consultancy post in the plastic surgery unit of Shotley Bridge General Hospital in county Durham, Newcastle Regional Hospital Board.

Mr Bell's numismatic activities began at the age of five when, with other children, he visited a burnt-out trapper's shack on Victoria Road, Vancouver, near the Fraser River, and found three South African coins amongst the still-warm ashes. A few weeks later his nascent collection increased by a quarter with the finding of a Hawaiian S-cent metal tram ticket near his aunt's home at 3170 Broadway W., Vancouver.

By the mid-1950s his numismatic interest had...