Part 2
Thirteen Pence to the Shilling
Queen Victoria Copper Issues

Jersey Commercial Bank unissued One Pound or 26 Livres, 183- For more information see the banknote page.

• Mintages for these coins are typically small.
• There are various die varieties for most of these coins.
• The initials of WW for William Wyon are on the truncation.

From the Times of London, November 22, 1841

• On the 1841 coins, the last one in the date is struck over a zero
• The 1841 obverse die was also used for the Gibraltar 1841 proof one quart and the 1842 one quart circulation issues.
• The effigy (but not the legend) appears to be the one used on the 1839 Isle of Man farthing
• There are proof examples for both issues.  However, the 1861 issue is a proof only issue. For the 1861 coins, examples exists in both copper and bronze.  The bronze proof coins are extremely rare.
• The 1861 obverse die was used for the Gibraltar 1861 proof one quart. Note the striations on both coins, which are due to die clashing on the Jersey issue.

From the Times of London, November 13, 1844

• Thirteen Jersey pennies have the same weight as 12 English pennies, i.e., 1 pound avoirdupois. 
• Some 1841, 1844, 1858, and 1861 issues have a hair-line die crack from the truncation to and sometimes across the V of VICTORIA. 
• On finer examples of the 1851, 1858, and 1861 issues, striations are visible on some coins due to die clashing. 
• If you look closely, on most issues many letters are repunched. 
• Several different “1/13 fractional” varieties are known to exist. 
• There are various styles of digits for these coins.
• For all the issues, proofs were struck.  All of the 1865 coins are proofs. 

The coins sent out for the Exhibition by the Royal Mint in London were all proofs and there were two of each piece. They included ‘type’ specimens of Imperial coinage of Queen Victoria, including two 'Una and the Lion' £5 pieces of 1839. There were also representative sets of colonial coins, comprising specimens from Canada (plus its preconfederation provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), Cyprus, Hong Kong, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Jamaica, Jersey, Mauritius, the Straits Settlements and certain other colonies. …

In all there were 275 pieces, comprising two specimens each of 90 different coins and 47 different medals…

The official catalogue of the New South Wales Court states that the Sydney Branch exhibited a 'Collection of proof specimens of British and Colonial Coins, War and other Medals, struck at the Royal Mint during the present Century.' ....

The coins and medals produced by London for the Branch to display at the Exhibition are almost a topic unto themselves. As the coins were all prepared in 1879 they include a significant number of restrikes of earlier, and in some cases no longer current, pieces. ....

The colonial coins include oddities such as Canadian twenty-cent pieces of 1871; Jersey copper pennies of 1865; Jersey bronze pennies, half pennies and farthings of 1877 without mintmark; and in respect of Gibraltar, two quart and one quart coins of 1861 and half-quart specimens, which lack a date altogether.

From “The Gossiping Guide to Jersey” by J. Bertrand Payne, 1865.

     “The coinage and banking operations of Jersey offer some salient points to the curious.  At the present, Bank of England notes, English and French gold and silver, and a local copper money form the staple currency.  Formerly, French silver and copper, among the former of which the six-livre piece was prominent, were almost the only medium of exchange, and these coins, at the best of times, were very scarce.  To supply this deficiency, early in this century the States of Jersey had three- shilling and eighteen-penny pieces, of local value, coined at the Royal Mint, but these were withdrawn in 1834.  The insular currency was framed on the old French system—the sol or sou  being a halfpenny, twenty sols one livre, and twenty-four livres one Louis d'or. In the Extentes, or Royal Rent Rolls, as well as in private account books of the olden time, reference is made to deniers  and liards—one the twenty-fourth, the other the quarter of a sol.  In the Guernsey special coinage the latter exists, and is almost as great a curiosity in its way as the new French centime; the former never was a coin, but merely a hair-splitting instrument of computation.  Monnoie d'ordre appears in the publication of some fines in the last century.  This had the effect of raising the livre fifty per cent., by means of an order in Council, dated 1729, and was iniquitously procured by certain local capitalists to depreciate the value of real property.  The term is used in contradistinction to the livre tournois, or cours de France.  Before 1841, the numismatist whose ambition did not rise higher than copper would have made hay triumphantly in Jersey, for it seemed that the Island was the universal refuge for all the “browns” of the universe.  Imported wholesale, as a profitable speculation, by the native sailors from every country in the world, the Jersey people were so cosmopolitan in their ideas of what constituted a penny or a halfpenny, that flat discs of metal, innocent of die, passed freely in the ruck of this motley circulation.  However, in the year mentioned, the Crown waived its prerogative, and permitted the States to issue its own pence, halfpence, and farthings.  These, in accordance with the local system of calculation, were struck at the rate of thirteen pence to the English shilling, being a premium of 8 1/3 per cent, in favour of the latter. With the additional advantage of the Jersey pound avoirdupois, being 17 ½ ounces, money went far, but although the latter still remains as a boon to the buyer, almost all articles of necessity and luxury are bought and sold at English rates, or at so much “British!” as the Jersey Rothschildren say. 

     From money itself, one naturally passes on to the trading in it, so we come smoothly to the topic of banks.  These are not of any old standing here, for before the age of steam, local financial transactions were of a very primitive and “penny-farthing” character.  Today there are a half dozen respectable ones in St. Helier, corresponding with English and foreign houses, and apparently doing well.  Besides these, there are other more nondescript banks, the functions of which seem limited to the issue of one-pound notes, and which, on any inquiries made touching payment, are found to have no “local habitation,” only “a name.”  It speaks well for the honesty or simplicity of “the dwellers within this isle,” that no gigantic abuse has ever grown out of the dangerous facility that exists for issuing these notes.  We say gigantic, because many a humble rogue, with more brains than means, has “gone in and won” at this exciting game.  Still no one has reaped, and we hope never will, the harvest a Paul, a Strachan, a Redpath, or a Durdin would have sickled, with such advantages before them where to choose.  Before 1813, the tag-rag and bob-tail, anybody and everybody, issued paper money—coin being very scarce—for paltry sums descending even to a shilling!  Then, and not before it was wanted, a law fixed the minimum of these “kites” at one pound, Jersey or British, according to taste.  Since this, parish officers, merchants, directors of dissenting chapels, tradesmen, and adventurers, have disseminated their autographs at this price, usque ad nauseam.  As no prohibitory law on the subject exists, anyone who can afford to get a plate engraved can issue notes, provided he can procure a clientele among which to pass them, and can thus combine banking, trading, and, de facto, unlimited bill-drawing, which would, in the opinion of many, render Jersey a real Commercial Utopia.”