Paul & Bente R Withers. Published by Galata Print Ltd., Llanfyllin. 1999. HB (green cloth with gilt lettering on cover and spine).  264 pages. Illustrated throughout with b&w in-text illustrations of all types and varieties. A4 (214 x 304mm). Covers the tokens of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, though it has to be said that there are very few 19th-century tokens of Scotland. ISBN 0951667157   New

Awarded the IAPN book prize and bronze medal in 1999.

The towns of issue are listed alphabetically and the descriptions of them were taken from contemporary directories and guides. Issuers were carefully researched in those and other publications, including directories.  Contemporary newspaper accounts and adverts are used extensively throughout the book. There is an extensive bibliography, and seven pages of indexes. There are concordances with Davis, and Christopher Eimer's Medallic Portraits of the Duke of Wellington. There are appendices covering associated items, edges (illustrated) and maps showing the geographical distribution of the places of issue of the silver and copper tokens.  This is the standard reference work on this series and is also much used in Canada, the USA and Europe.  

This book was five years in the writing and was our response to the frustration we felt at the varieties not properly described, or not illustrated in the pages of The Nineteenth Century Token Coinage of Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man by W J Davis.  It was inspired by an American numismatist Colonel Axel Wahlstedt, who wrote: 'It is not sufficient that a coin-catalogue is chronologically arranged, so that the different coin-types follow each other in the same way and in the same succession. A scientific coin-catalogue must also give an account of the economic conditions that form the background to the activity of the monetary workshops. Thus placed in their natural environment the coins can contribute to make a picture of the pulsating life they once assisted to maintain'  in Transactions of the International Numismatic Congress 1936.

Another detailed and carefully-researched standard reference work on British tokens from Galata Print.  British Copper Tokens.

 Numismatic Books > 19th Century Tokens Highlands and Islands, and Ireland