Georgivs III from 1768

[Guest vodkatart]

Hi i have found while clearing out his house a old looking coin. it is copper/bronze looking in colour, weighs about 2g and is about 20mm diameter.

It has on one side a head with the words 'Georgivs III DEI GRATIA'. On the other a shield with the date 1768 and the writing 'IN MEMORY OF THE GOOD OLD DAYS' It has no denomination so i cant id it from any web site. can any one help. Ill try to get a picture on here

[Rob]

It's a gaming token of minimal value. Typically they are imitation guineas or fractions thereof and very common. Ebay usually has a lot listed at 99p and many don't sell. Can't find one immediately, but I think this is what you are describing, albeit a different date which will be irrelevant anyway.

[Peter]

As Rob has said they are very common...often holed for a watch chain.

They were often given to theatre audiences as momentoes.

There are numerous different dates/types/wording and on the whole they were not produced to deceive the public

into thinking these were spade guineas or half guineas.

[Guest Ron Haller-Williams]

"On the whole they were not produced to deceive the public into thinking these were spade guineas or half guineas". Many have advertising, scalloped edges, or a very clear reference to the past (such as "the olden times" or "in memory of the good old days") or an obviously wrong date such as 1702. Don't forget, people handling guineas were usually literate and reasonably educated, unlike those who had to handle just halfpence. Also, think of today: you'd be VERY upset to get a bad £20 or £50 note, but if you dropped a 2p or 5p coin you probably would not bother to pick it up! I'm saying that much more care would be taken to scrutinise a guinea.

The original main use was as card counters or gaming chips. 20 carat (916.6 thou) gold is a very soft metal, and in the couse of a couple of evenings a guinea might lose 2 grains of weight and hence be unusable as a legal-tender coin, which is why these brass counters were used. Also, the term "guinea" had something of a cachet, which is why these continued in use after the introduction of the sovereign. In fact I have a 20th-century box of a gross (144) of these counters, plus some of the contents (inscribed something like "Play with 'International' series games").

In Victorian times there were adverts from producers of these things, some even saying that they could be produced more cheaply than calling cards (visiting cards, cartes de visite, think of the modern-day business cards). And may were produced for promotional purposes, such as for a goldsmith named Fattorini, or to commemorate some event.