that time mention them as circulating among the merchants in Halifax. Design One of the rights claimed by Coffin was the right to coin money, and he ordered the minting of pennies by Edward Thomason of Birmingham, from a design possibly made by the engraver Thomas Halliday, who is known to have worked with Thomason at this time. The obverse of the coin depicts a seal on an ice floe. It is inscribed 'MAGDALEN ISLAND TOKEN' with date '1815' appearing at the bottom. The reverse of the coin depicts a filleted cod and its inscription says 'SUCCESS TO THE FISHERY', followed by the denomination of 'ONE PENNY'. The cod and the inscription on the reverse refers to the fishing industry that was essential to the islands' economy. Numismatic Study An example of the Magdalen Island penny token is first mentioned in a catalog compiled by Thomas Sharp of the collection of Sir George Chetwynd. Sharp described the token's edge as "engrailed-Halliday", mentioning the name of Thomas Halliday, who is thought to have to created the dies for the token. It is also mentioned in the third volume of Josef Neumann's extensive survey of copper coinage published in 1863. Canadian numismatist R. W. McLachlan wrote about the Magdalen Island penny token in his Canadian Numismatics in 1886, saying "of its history I have not been able to learn anything, but believe it was imported by some of the large fish dealers for change, which at that time was scarce on the islands." He returned to this subject in a later article published in "The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal", where he discovered that the production of the token was described in the memoirs of Sir Edward Thomason, who said that he undertook the following work during 1815: I had manufactured this year a large quantity of tokens for Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Bart., who is the sole possessor and king, as he called himself, of the Magdalen islands, situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in North America. They were principally of copper, pence and half-pence. ...as soon as a large quantity of these were struck off, Sir Isaac sailed off with them, packed up in casks, and took with him a powerful coining press and machinery, and dies ready engraved, to establish what he called a little mint for his subjects, to manufacture their coin for the future... McLachlan noted