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Talbot, Allum, and Lee (hereafter TAL) were the last names of partners, who in 1794, began a trading company, based near the docks of New York City, and which imported goods by ship from East India. To promote their enterprise through advertisement, they retained the services of the Peter Kempson & Co. Mint of Birmingham, England to produce some two tons of copper tokens, that generated over 200,000 pieces intended to circulate in New York City. The tokens, bearing the dates 1794 or 1795, were engraved by Thomas Wyon. Though of half penny size, they were designated as cents. Their obverse features a standing figure of the goddess Liberty, with right breast exposed in the French style, and holding a pole in her right hand supporting a
phrygian cap. Behind Liberty is a bale of cotton symbolic of commerce. The top periphery reads "Liberty & Commerce", with some varieties distinguished by the size of the ampersand. The date occupies the exergue.
The reverse pictures a merchant vessel at sea. The earliest 1794 emissions inadvertently omitted the words "New York" intended to appear just above the ship. This was rectified, and the bulk of the 1794 tokens include this language. The ship's rigging varied between the two years of issuance. To read the full TAL legends, one must inspect both the edge of the token, and thereafter its reverse. The edge of the 1794 token reads: "PAYABLE AT THE STORE OF.", with the remaining legend continued on the reverse: "TALBOT ALLUM AND LEE / NEW YORK"...with "ONE CENT" below. In 1795, the edge inscription was revised to read: "WE PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ONE CENT", followed by the reverse: "AT THE STORE OF TALBOT ALLUM & LEE NEW YORK".
TALS come in both thick and thin planchet versions. A few examples have plain edges, or have been fashioned in silver.
The TALS were the first merchant tokens made for America in substantial numbers. In fact, the company had such a sizeable surplus of them (including the particularly unpopular 1795 issue), that it was hard-pressed to successfully disburse them all. An unlikely purchaser of these excess tokens surfaced - the Philadelphia Mint, which in two installments, purchased about 52,000 pieces. The Mint was encountering chronic difficulties in securing sufficient quality copper to strike its quotas of half cents and cents. Nice half cent planchet discs could be punched from the TAL tokens. These tokens could not be used directly to produce large cents however, since they were only 28.6 mm wide, short of the legally mandated 29 mm required of large cents. Observant collectors of 1795 and 1797 half cents may occasionally note faint under traces from the source tokens. At least two large cents have been found overstruck on TALS.
Although the regular TAL pieces produced for American consumption are not considered Conder tokens, the Kempson Mint did create various mulings, and other deviant edge designs and language, specifically for sale to English collectors, at a profit. These are considered Conder tokens, and feature a typical TAL obverse coupled with one of the following muled reverses: a stork; a boy standing next to a vertical screw; the Blofield Calvary; York Cathedral; John Howard (a social reformer); and Earl Howe (an admiral). Special edges include: plain edges; olive leaf edges; one that reads "Current Everywhere"; and another that says Cambridge Bedford Huntington.X.X'.
TAL tokens were relatively uncommon to collectors in America until the 1930s and 1940s, when London dealers started shipping many uncirculated specimens here.
In 1796, James Lee retired, leading to the ultimate dissolution of the partnership.
The TAL pictured above is dated 1795, with plain edge, and graded MS 64 BN by PCGS.