Is this a 17th cent. British Tradesman Token?

AE, 1.57g.; 19 mm.; Die Axis: 12

Obv: [...name of a trade ] IN . BAN[BURY?] and in middle
*I*
P*E
1661

Rev: illegible inscription around. In middle
[HIS
HALF
PENY]

Ok, I can hear you shout "put it out of its misery!!!"....

This is something sitting on my table for ages and I have had no clue of what it is. Then last night I found this photo on the net:
and read that it is an English Tradesman Token of the 17th century. You can obviously see the similarity. Unfortunately, there lies my dead end.

Any ideas, or am I following the wrong rabbit here? Thank you in advance...

PS- I have found Williamson's book online, but could not understand how the catalogue format Works. Anyway I checked all geographical locations starting with Ban...

dear friend,

pls refer to this link. you might reach some solution.
regards,
philip jose thayil

http://pepyssmallchange.wordpress.com/category/tokens-from-within-the-city-walls/

Hi thespis26, Ifs its any help , the I is his surname initial , which is infact a J for Jenkins for example.
The P is his first name initial ,and the E is his wife's initial.
I have had a brief look in my Williamson's book but didn't find it. If I get some time I will have a better look,

Hi, thank you both.

Pjthayil's link is an amazing site; I never knew these tokens could tell this much.
 
After Richard's tip on initials I looked at Williamson's book again. Unfortunately there is no index for initials. But the name may correspond to "Phillip Jammet" who ran the tavern called "Golden Cock" in Houndsditch, London and after his death in 1673, left in his will considerable money to construct 12 houses in Newbury for the poor.

I found this http://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/Online/object.aspx?objectID=object-431757&start=3855&rows=1 in museum of London's collection. This must be the piece described by Williamson. Although initial's seem to fit, my example may be of a different design belonging to tha same man, or something else entirely.

At least I am more convinced that mine is a tradesman token, not a regular coin from somewhere else. Maybe mine is an unknown variety... If so, than this piece was around during the monetary crisis just after the Civil War, and the collapse of Cromwell's Republic, when Charles II was restored as the king of England.

Quote: Richard 2Hi thespis26, Ifs its any help , the I is his surname initial , which is infact a J for Jenkins for example.
The P is his first name initial ,and the E is his wife's initial.
I have had a brief look in my Williamson's book but didn't find it. If I get some time I will have a better look,

Looks like an I.

A lot of old English coins look like an I rather than J

They had no letter J from Roman times and so names like John would appear as Iohn.
Easier to sculpt as well.

When you compare these two coins you can see the similarity of the initials. So Philipp Jemmet is a very good guess for my example. But the surrounding inscription is not the same between mine and Museum of London example.



The other sides though are totally different.

Unfortunately there is no initials index of Williamson's book available to me. But I checked the personal name index for from the book of everyone with initials of J. & P. or P. & J. this is the only name that came up.

There's a chance it's just not been catalogued yet, a lot of tradesmen tokens exist because there were so many varieties

Just spent the last hour and half going through Michael Dickinson's 17th century tokens of the British Isles, front to back, and have been unable to find your token. So I've  either missed it (don't think so) or you have an unrecorded variety. Well done.

Thank you Richard for your effort. I think we have identified what it is (I mean as a token and its purpose). I think collectionwise, that is enough for my sake.

On my part, about this token, I have made an entry for Numista so that the information will not be lost; it will appear when the entry is validated. Secondly I have sent an e-mail to Museum of London to let them know about this one. They seem to have an enormous collection of similar London area tokens; so I presume they may also have a specialist working on them. Maybe they can add this one to their databases, whatsoever. If they reply my mail with any new information I will be happy to update those to what we have here.

Frankly, this was one of the most difficult things to identify that ever came my way. You know, I am talking about the feeling when you have no idea about what you are looking at, no clue on how to identify a coin. So it has been sitting on my table to annoy me for more than a year:):):)     

Hi

I’ve had a quick look through the issuer’s initials indexes which are listed alphabetically in the back of each of the 8 volumes of the Catalogue of the famous Norweb Collection of British C17th tokens.
Unfortunately I could find no initials that matched the ones above listed in any of the county volumes other than those of Philip Jemmet, as you mentioned above, plus one of Philip Jordan and his wife who issued a token from the sign of the Black Boy in Friday Street (also in London). The know token for the latter issuer looks nothing like your half penny and neither does the recorded tokens of Philip Jemmet of the Golden Cock (as you have pointed out above). There was certainly nothing that looked similar listed for Banbury either.

Like Richard suggested you may have an unrecorded variety.

All the best

Antiquarian

Hi Antiquarian, many thanks for the effort you have put searching for this token.

The information (photo, weight and diameter) of this coin has been recorded into Numista database underhttps://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces54578.html and available now. If anything new comes up on this particular entry, we can now add them to the catalogue entry.
Another tradesman token is also listed on Numista under https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces54599.html and I am sure more varieties will be listed here in the future.