French, Customs Seal, Primes, Image & Found by Mark Weaver.
Found near Essex/Herts border, 28mm.
PR... // blank (?OU on edge)
Has some similarities to Belgium customs seals and Douanes = Customs was suspected to be the word around the edge but not conclusive.
Philippe Lanez has confirmed as a French customs seal - compare it to BSG.BS.00624.
Also from Philippe on dating, ""II.2 Written marks
What do the “PRIMES” and “REEXPORTATIONS D'ENTREPÔT” entries mean?
We discovered this through a monograph of the customs directorates of France 1890.
They tell us, for the second half of the XIX' if applicable, on the main customs office of Marseille and informs us that it is Louis-Philippe (as king 1830 et 1848) who set up a system of export primes in order to relaunch an economy heavily hampered by the revolution and the Napoleonic wars...."
Extract from a credible source - Etude de plombs de douane comme éléments de datation d'un naufrage, Laurence Serra, Archéologie en Languedoc, n'' 28, 2004.
