1 Penny - George III

Bermuda's 1793 penny was struck in Birmingham by the Soho Mint under Matthew Boulton — the same operation that would soon revolutionize British coinage. The island had long suffered from a chronic shortage of small change, with Spanish, Portuguese, and locally cut coins all circulating in an uneasy parallel economy. This issue was a private commercial venture rather than a Crown directive, commissioned by Bermuda merchants specifically to address that shortage.

Boulton used his steam-powered presses, giving these coppers a precision and edge consistency that hand-struck colonial issues could not match. The contract predates his famous 1797 British cartwheel pennies by four years.