Spink & Son Ltd. (London, UK) has released a new book on Canadian tokens. Entitled Imperial Designs: Canada's Ships, Colonies& Commerce Tokens, the book is by well known numismatic author and researcher Christopher Faulkner. Its publication is supported by a grantfrom the J. Douglas Ferguson Historical Research Foundation. This 450-page book is the first entirely new study of the series in 100 years.

Chapter One explains the historical meaning behind the presence of the ship on the obverse and the familiar legend on the reverse which gives theseries its name. The ship symbolized the primary means of transportation which tied the British North American colonies both to one another and totheir mother country.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the words "ships, colonies and commerce" had a wide popular appeal and an almost magical authority. As theypassed from hand to hand, the tokens not only circulated a store of value (nominally a halfpenny), they also helped to circulate an idea of empireand the primary means by which that idea was secured. The book's first chapter also offers an account of where and by whom the varieties in theseries were struck, and when and where the token circulated in the course of its forty-year life. Earlier efforts at cataloguing the series areexplained and there is a detailed record of 12 major collections of the past.

Chapter Two is a fully illustrated catalogue of all known varieties and die states of Breton 997, one of the most difficult and challenging seriesin Canadian numismatics. For ease of identification the series has been broken down into Groups and sub-groups. Within each Group, every variety anddie state receives its own catalogue entry. A number of previously unknown varieties are listed. Every entry includes a commentary which explains thecharacteristics of the variety and its die states. A sales record, where one exists, accompanies each entry.

Chapter Three deals at length with three extremely rare and controversial Ships, Colonies & Commerce tokens, Breton 999, 1000, and 1001. Everyknown example of each of these tokens is illustrated and pedigreed. Biographies of W.A.D. Lees and L.A. Langstroth, two of the foundationalcollectors and cataloguers of the series constitute Chapter Four. Finally, an Appendix deals with various errors in the series and what they can tellus about the circumstances under which the tokens were struck. This book offers the kind of presentation and analysis that have never been undertakenpreviously with any individual series of pre- Confederation Canadian tokens.

The book was released at Toronto Coin Expo, May 3-4, 2019. It can be purchased in the UK and Europe from www.spinkbooks.com and in Canada from Sveto Kovacevic at Ancient Numismatic Enterprise, 2219 Queen Street E., TorontoM4E 1E8. Email: ane@vcoins.com. Tel. 416 686-8019.

Christopher Faulkner is the author of two previous books from Spink, the award winning The Holey Dollars and Dumps of Prince Edward Island(2012) and Coins Are Like Songs: The Upper Canada Coppers, 1815-1841 (2016).

For more information, or to order, see:
Imperial Designs: Canada's Ships, Colonies and CommerceTokens by Christopher Faulkner (https://spinkbooks.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=59/&product_id=631)