Description
GREAT BRITAIN Lancashire Blackburn Nova Scotia - Robert Hopwood & Son Breton 898
Obverse: ROBERT HOPWOOD & SON, NOVA SCOTIA, CROSSFIELD, WELLINGTON MILLS
Reverse: A shield with a streamer below bearing the motto
GRADATIM 1852
Fred Bowman gives a summary of what had been written about Robert Hopwood & Son in the Canadian Numismatic Bulletin Vol. 6 #4, April 1955
The first reference to this coin is in the Leroux catalogue of 1888. He
found it described in an English sale catalogue and, assuming that the Nova Scotia
mentioned on the coin referred to Canada, he included the coin in his catalogue.
found it described in an English sale catalogue and, assuming that the Nova Scotia
mentioned on the coin referred to Canada, he included the coin in his catalogue.
In 1892 Mr. McLachlan in his "Annals of the Nova Scotian Currency" wrote
as follows~- "I have not been able to locate either Crossfield or Wellington
Mills. The above 'coin is said to have been struck for a proposed firm of millers
that intended to -commence operations in Nova Scotia in 1852. No specimen exists
in Canada. The coin was intended as an advertisement card rather than for circulation."
In 1894 Mr. Breton said that the first specimen was seen among the Canadian
coins in an English collection.
An article in the American Journal of Numismatics in 1899 said:- "It is a
token used in a Lancashire cotton mill owned by Robert Hopwood & Son of Blackburn in Lancashire. The mill is situated in apart of Blackburn known as Nova Scotia and is called the Nova Scotia Mill. The same firm, or their predecessors, owned two other mills called Crossfield and Wellington."
The coin is very rare even in England and it is probably a pattern, very
few being struck and not put into circulation. Neither Batty nor Davis knew of
it.
Mr. W.W.C. Wilson had three specimens which he purchased in England and
it is probable that no other specimens have crossed the Atlantic.
At any rate, it is certainly not a Canadian token
In a 1969 article in the Ontario Numismatic Association of the Ontario Numismatist, John McKay-Clements still had it in his list of the top ten rarest Canadian coins (as #5). It was in very good company with some rare tokens, the 1911 silver dollar, 1916C sovereign, and the 1862 British Columbia ten and twenty dollar gold coins.
