EARLY DAY TOKENS

Hokitika Guardian, 18 September 1940, Page 6

EARLY DAY TOKENS

A STRANGE! COLLECTION. WELLINGTON, Sc. 17. s 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 token 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,;, hut some are double the weight and more. They date from 1355 to 1881, for soon after that they were recognised as a great nniance among official coinage and were banned by law. But while the token fashion lasted tokens were the business rage, te be handed out in small change, as discount tokens or as advertising. This- -boxful includes a- few .from okl Wellington firms, not' many of them in existence now, hut 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 200/,. pints), good, in sufficient number, for more pints at the same hotel. Grocers, drapers, tailors, ironmongers, jewellers, a music shop, paporhangers, butchers and leather merchants of the ’fifties to ’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 oi 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, he worth their metal value and no more.