EARLY DAY TOKENS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 September 1940, Page 8

EARLY DAY TOKENS

' A STRANGE COLLECTION. An unexpected contribution to the waste reclamation drive in Wellington has been a remarkable collection, gathered together over many years, of the once popular and now long illegal shopping ■ token coins. The donor suggested that the tokens have a greater value to collectors than as scrap bronze, and the committee has sent them to the Wellington Numismatics Society. There are' about 200 of them. Most of them are .about penny size, but some are double the weight and more. They date from 1855 to 1881, for soon after that they were recognised as a great nuisance' among official coinage and were banned by law. But while the token fashion lasted tokens were the business rage, to be handed out in small change, as discount tokens or as advertising. This boxful includes a few from old Wellington firms, not many of - them in existence now, but the collection is properly representative of all New Zealand, with more from Sydney and “Hobart Town,” London and Dublin. The hotels had them for change on “pints” (Imperial 20oz pints), good, in sufficient number, for more pints at the same hotel. Grocers, drapers, tailors, ironmongers, jewellers, a music shop, paperhangers, butchers and leather merchants of'the ’fifties to the ’eighties contributed to the riot of unofficial coinage. The numismatist has his own ideas about the value of old coins, tokens and medallions, and, whereas a lot of people add value for every dent, and bend and defamation, the collector who knows passes these damaged old relics coldly and likes his in mint or nearly mint condition. Therefore a number’of this gathering of 200 token curiosities will, unless someone, pays. more than their real collection value, because this is a patriotic purpose, be worth their metal value and no more.