1/2 Penny Seated Justice

Lower Canada never had formal authority to issue its own coinage — these tokens circulated because the colonial government in London consistently failed to supply adequate small change, leaving merchants and banks to fill the void privately. The Seated Justice halfpenny belongs to a wave of bank and merchant tokens that flooded the colony in the early nineteenth century, tolerated rather than sanctioned by the crown.

Breton 1011 is among the better-documented pieces in the Lower Canada token series, with specimens appearing regularly in Canadian collection dispersals since the late 1800s.