Just imagine yourself living in this time , Late 1800's early 1900's and you are a miner...mining coal. Not always an open pit but mostly underground , using a paraffin lamp that make more smoke than light , with every blow of your pick axe black dust fill the air. Groaning timber keeping the wall and roof from collapsing in on you with a constant water trickle coming through the roof ...this was not easy , extremely dangerous ... and to return to a zinc hut to go and sleep and to try and clean up... then, repeat , this was the daily life of coal miners .
One of the limiting factors to the early industrial development of South Africa was the lack of proven economic coal reserves and for many years coal had to be imported into the Cape Colony from as far a field as South Wales.
A set of four tokens are known from this mine. Theron suggests that these were issued by De Beers when they owned the company and were used in the colliery's native workers' compound. As such their use can be paralleled with other De Beers issued compound tokens such as those on their Kimberly diamond mines.
In 1852 this situation prompted the powers that be to offer a reward of £100 to anyone who could find coal deposits in the province.
In 1859 a farmer by the name of John Grove occupied "Cyphergat" farm, located a few kilometers to the south of the area later to become Molteno. In this year Grove asked a Mr. George Vice (1830-1917), later known as the farther of Molteno, to build a shop on his land.
While constructing the shop and an adjacent dwelling house Vice lived in a hut on the farm. It was during Vice's stay on "Cyphergat" that in 1860 he discovered coal deposits on Grove's land.
Vice was keen on exploiting the coal deposit but before his mine could be developed further Grove insisted he must close it down and not advertise the discovery to anyone.
Vice was allowed only to remove two wagon loads of coal off the farm before his trial diggings were closed.
Three years after vacating Cyphergat , Vice, who had become increasingly frustrated by Grove's decision not to develop the local coal deposits decided to search for the extension of the coal measures on lands adjacent to Grove's farm.
To this effect he purchased the nearby farms of Paardekraal and Onverwacht on land that was later to constitute the township of Molteno.In 1864 Vice formed his own mining company and commenced the sinking of the Penshaw Mine from where he started shipping wagons of coal to Cradock and Kimberley. Soon afterwards other mining companies sprang-up in the area. These included The Great Stormberg Coal Company and Cape Collieries Limited. Cape Collieries closed in 1905 while the Penshaw Mine stayed in production until 1913.
When coal was finally developed at Cyphergat, some 15 years after Vice's original discovery, the first general manager of The Cyphergat Coal Company was a Alexander Lawrie who had been a mine manager in his native Scotland. In addition to coal Cyphergat also yielded fine quality clay and while he was colliery manager Lawrie built a large brickworks on the mine site. This works produced some of the finest bricks, drain pipes and sewer pipes ever made in South Africa.
One contributing factor to the closure of this coalfield was the inferior quality of its coal compared to that from other of South Africa's coalfields that were to be discovered shortly afterwards.
ALL RIGHTS TO THIS PAGE http://www.on-the-rand.co.uk/Coalfields/Molteno.htm
According to Theron at some point in its history The Cyphergat Coal Company became a subsidiary holding of De Beers, Cecil Rhodes' famous Kimberley based diamond mining company. It is likely that the De Beers acquired the colliery so as to safeguard a supply of fuel for its own needs at a time when there were hardly any other indigenous coal supplies available to them. Transport of the coal to Kimberley was by ox wagon over a distance in excess of 300 kilometers. Molteno's coal was of relatively poor quality and the demand dropped after the completion of the Kimberley–Johannesburg railway line which allowed De Beers easy access to better quality coal from the Transvaal.
At one time Cyphergat was populated mainly by Scots and Welshmen and boasted a main street, a hotel, its own railway station and shops. However, the relatively poor quality of its coal coupled with its high transport costs eventually saw Cyphergat become a ghost town.
Some other info :
Ever wondered what happened to some of these tokens ? I recently purchased some CCC tokens from a lady in Pretoria that tell the story that her grandpa used these tokens as counters for sheep shearers , each sheep sheared would get a token and at the end of the day they counted the tokens to know what to pay the shearer. 19/08/2019
About the Tokens
All tokens was made of Brass with 2/- , 1/- , 6d and 3d denominations.
The 3d being the most valuable and rare thus harder to get, I can also now confirm there is indeed two types of 3d tokens , one uniface and the other strike trough with the strike through being the more rare of the two with a rough estimated ratio of +- 2% that was strike through. The other denominations do come around for sale every now and then but in general CCC tokens a fairly rare'ish and demand a bit of a premium on purchase , They are indeed one of the more attractive Tokens of South Africa.
All Tokens where oval in shape with the CCC and value denomination on one side . On the 3d the observe is either uniface or a strike through design. The 2/~ , 1/~ and 6d is strike-through with the reverse lettering on the observe.
Side note , the 2/~ would almost appear to be not too readily available also , I would classify the Tokens as the 3d , 2/~, 1/~ and then the 6d on how rare they would be... but please correct me if you think different.
.All Text and Images are @ Copyright 2015-20XX All Rights Reserved Contact Website owner for permission to use.
Based in Kwa-Zulu Natal Port Shepstone - Buying country wide - We collect more than what we sell - All images on site is mostly my coins , if anything is yours let me know and I will remove it.
I know Herns Catalogue say different but due to recent discoveries I was part of , I am fairly confident I am correct.
For the nay sayers on the 2/~ , The recent discovery I was part of had not a single 2/~ . On Bid or Buy only two sales for the 2/~ is listed (Jun 2017 and Jul 2019) , My own was a one on one sale. I seen some on other auction sites such as DNW (2012) ... Just food for thought.
Saw this on an auction site , "Threepence extremely rare and may be the Harlech-Jones specimen mentioned as the only one known by Theron " Keep in mind, Theron had no Internet ... enough said.
Totals:
2/~ - None 1/~: 10 3D: 48 + 1 different 6D: 190
Hern 138a , 138b , 138c , 138d.
205 / 1000