Token With Hot Air Balloon/ Winged God On Bird

It looks and has the characteristics of a spiel marke. There is one on ebay with a similar reverse and a vintage automobile on the obverse: 396100912188. Seller attributes it to Nuremberg although it is not listed on Numista. I did not find one on MA Shops.

Nuremberg tokens or "jetons" were used for whatever the customer wanted to use them for - the token makers didn't care. Card game gambling tokens? Sure. Play money? That'll work too. Embed them in costume jewellery? Whatever floats your boat. The token-makers of Nuremberg were good at making tokens more cheaply than anybody else in Europe, and good at marketing them for diverse purposes to diverse demographics as society changed.

"Spielmarke" literally means "play token" in German, indicating the general usage for objects classified as such was as play money, either packaged and sold with a game (such as a deck of cards) or just by themselves as a tin of tokens for use as child's play money. Some spielmarke say "spiel marke", "spiel geld" or "spiel munze" on them, while others (such as your piece) do not.

The typical age for such pieces is pre-WWI - during and after the war the token-makers switched to making notgeld coins. So the period 1890-1910 wouldn't be unreasonable - and also fits in well with the design of both the car and the balloon.

Thanks for all of the replies. The design of the car on the car token looks like one of the earliest cars like the first Model T. The balloon design also looks very old. I tried matching the design with some historical old balloons but I didn't find anything that matched.

Could it not be a Balloon to ride in, but instead a 'Barrage Balloon' that were used during the 2 big wars? (just a thought)