1724 1/2P Hibernia

Coin Details

Auction Record

$37,375 CH FINE 01-01-2005 Stack's

Description

This 1724 Wood's Hibernia Halfpenny represents the final year of regular production for the series, struck during the year that Jonathan Swift's devastating "Drapier's Letters" turned public opinion decisively against Wood's coinage. The obverse features the laureate bust of George I facing right with the royal legend, while the reverse displays the seated Hibernia holding her harp with the HIBERNIA legend and the fateful 1724 date. The 1724 halfpennies were among the last coins produced before political pressure forced the discontinuation of Wood's Irish coinage venture. Swift, writing under the pseudonym "M.B., Drapier," published a series of seven letters arguing that Wood's patent coinage was a corrupt scheme that would impoverish Ireland by flooding the country with debased copper tokens. The letters were enormously popular and influential, and the British government was ultimately forced to withdraw the patent. This makes the 1724 Hibernia halfpenny a coin intimately connected to one of the most famous episodes of political protest in eighteenth-century British and Irish history. Coins already produced by 1724 that could not be distributed in Ireland were sent to the American colonies, where they circulated without the political controversy that plagued them in Ireland. The 1724 halfpenny thus represents both the end of the Wood's Hibernia experiment in Ireland and the beginning of a second life for these coins in colonial America.

Rarity Notes

Scarce. As the final year of regular production, 1724 halfpennies are somewhat less common than 1722 and 1723 issues.

Cross References

PCGS #190; Breen; Nelson; Swift's Drapier's Letters 1724; cf. PCGS #197 (Date Below), PCGS #45379 (DEI above Head)