Thomas Spence's Tree of Liberty / Rights of Man Token

(1795) Thomas Spence / Tree of Liberty Conder token. D&H Middlesex 882. MS-64 BN (NGC). Plain edge. A classic variety in the series of Conders I like to call "American Reference Tokens," which would also include some of the Washington tokens, the Franklin Press token, the Kentucky token, and others in the colonial coin canon. For better or for worse, the previously mentioned tokens were engrained in the American psyche -- and decades of collections -- after being enshrined in the Redbook, while the tokens referencing Thomas Paine, who served in the Continental Army and fired the most significant literary volley of the American Revolution, were omitted. I like the Paine tokens, and I admired the chutzpah of the contributors to Q. David Bowers Whitman Colonial Encyclopedia for including them (W-8920 through 9060), though somehow they forgot to list this particular variety. This might be the most interesting die pair and the one with the richest American associations. The obverse depicts four men encircling a Liberty Pole or a Liberty Tree, a distinctly American invention that came of age during the American Revolution. However, in a Spencian radicalized twist, rather than being topped with the traditional Liberty Cap (i.e. the cap and pole enshrined on early US coinage), this Liberty Tree is topped with the disembodied head of William Pitt the Younger. How festive.

This example shows abundant faded mint color on the lustrous and lightly reflective obverse, while the reverse is glossy chocolate brown with red around design elements. A little bit of verdigris is noted above the head of the leftmost pole-encircler. The sharpness and eye appeal are both excellent. A substantial die crack and bulge stretches horizontally across the central obverse, and another arc crack is seen in the lower left quadrant.