The Mint had issued no sensible quantities of silver coin since the late 1750s. In 1811-12 many tradesmen and bankers issued silver tokens, sufficiently light to avoid the melting pot, and these worked hard and went, in a small way, to satisfy the needs of the issuers and their customers. Some of these silver tokens received countermarks.
The survival of three worn tokens from three different issuers, but all bearing the same countermark, gives insight into the state of the circulating silver tokens around the time of the silver Recoinage of 1816-17.
If anyone has any silver coins, tokens, slap tokens or foreign silver bearing this exact countermark, the author would be pleased to hear.
BNS Research Blog 