Civil War Tokens, Store Cards, Patriotic Tokens

CIVIL WAR TOKENS

When coins were withdrawn from circulation in the northern states during the Civil War, opportunists began minting private pennies that became de facto legal tender throughout the Union. The coinage of a few cents may seem like small change, but in 1863 alone, almost 9,000 different token designs, depicting everything from patriotic flags to beer barrels, were struck. Some so closely resembled real cents that the government banned private mints in 1864.

The Fuld store card book, which is a catalog of all Civil War tokens with a merchant’s name or initials on them, is organized by state, city, and then alphabetically by merchant within that city. It kind of encourages people to pick a place like Milwaukee and then try to get one token from every merchant in town. That’s how store card tokens tend to be collected.

Patriotic tokens, which have patriotic slogans and images on them, are in a separate catalog. In that book, there are photographs of each of the 537 dies that were used to strike the tokens. The Fulds listed all the obverse-reverse die combinations, and whether the metal struck was copper, brass, or what have you. People tend to collect patriotic s by trying to get them all, but since there are thousands of patriotic tokens, that’s not really very obtainable.

Most of all, it is expensive as the tokens can be as little as $5 on up into the thousands. Here in Michigan, Birmingham to be precise there is a coin store called Abbott's on Woodward. The store is now run by the original owner's sons of John Abbott. John loved the collecting of CWT's and pieced together the largest collection in the world, including the cowboy boot from Grand Rapids, worth in excessive of $300,000.

If your interested in finding more info on CWT's please use the attached link to the Civil War Society.

Always,

CJC

http://www.cwtsociety.com/



Ref:

Marks, Ben (2011, December 11) "During the Civil War, Some People Got Rich Quick by Minting Their own Money" Collectors Weekly; Received from URL: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/during-the-civil-war-some-people-got-rich-quick-by-minting-their-own-money/