Anglesey Druid Penny Token Extremely Fine

The Industrial Revolution brought us many advancements but at the time the Royal Mint was unable to meet the needs presented by the booming industry which could not pay the wages of their workers. Also, by 1786, two-thirds of the coins in circulation in Britain were counterfeit and there was a chronic shortage of small denomination coins needed for everyday transactions. Government made little effort to address the problem so industry took the matter into its own hands. The solution to the problem began in 1786 when one of the largest veins of copper in the world was found at Parys Mountain on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. In 1787, the Parys Mines Company used some of that copper to begin striking these distinctive ‘Druid’ tokens to pay their workers and to release them into general circulation, the concept soon caught on and spread to all corners of the United Kingdom and these tokens became well collected at the time. We can offer you these very tokens that were struck in Penny denominations from 1787-1794, they have the Druid’s head on one side and the PMCo cypher on the reverse. The mine is still in operation today run by The Anglesey Mining Company.