British Merchant Dollars from the Collection of Michael Gietzelt

Foreword

The French revolutionary Bertrand Barère, in a speech to the National Convention in June 1794, made the following rather derogatory remark about the British victory over the French at the Battle of the Glorious First of June, “Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers”. To add further insult, he might well have added …“who are running out of small change”. As most numismatists well know, the shortage of circulating coinage was a major problem twice in the past 400 years and on both occasions it was manufacturing and commercial classes who were left to find a solution to the problem.

From the end of the Civil War in 1648 until 1672, the prolific issues of tradesmen’s tokens filled the gap left by a lack of official government backed coinage. A century later, the same cycle was beginning to repeat. While the production of a gold coinage was reasonably well maintained throughout the reign of George III, the issues of silver coinage became very sporadic. Two tiny issues of Shillings in 1763 and 1798 and a larger coining of Shillings and Sixpences in 1787 did little to address the shortage of...