Helga Palmer and Gordon Fielder recently unearthed this copper token dated 1788 from the Parys Mountain Copper Mining Company at West Basset in Cornwall.
By eighteenth century standards this little token had traveled a long way from home, but with a little research and extrapolation it is is easy to understand why.
During this period the Parys Mountain Copper mine was a world leader in copper production and competing hard with the mines of Cornwall - Parys being mostly open cast and huge was better placed than the smaller underground mines in Cornwall.
This was the case until 1788 when the output at Parys declined through exhaustion, and demand was on the increase, allowing Cornwall to gear up production.
As inevitable the demand for labour/miners would also have switched from Parys to Cornwall, so this provides a hypothesis as to how this coin arrived where it did - may be worthless at Basset Mine shop it was just thrown away.
Thanks to Helga for relating the story/providing the photo.
There is an interesting historical article about the Basset mines (written in 2011) referenced below.
Some more on Parys Mountain coming soon.
