Post Your Coins Or Medals With Industrial Imagery

Quite impressive!

As always, an interesting piece from a collecting area of which I have essentially no knowledge. Thanks for the education!

Did these tokens circulate alongside the official coinage or were they a local replacement coinage?

Both, really...but the proximate cause, of course, was the crippling scarcity of "small change." The Crown had not issued any copper coinage since 1806, nor any shillings or sixpence since 1787, so the supply was shrinking while demand was flourishing. Other issues contributed to this phenomenon as well, such as inflation; the widespread trend away from agrarianism and a barter economy and toward employer-employee relationships in mines, factories, mills, etc.; and an oversupply of copper that made it profitable for "mints" -- often button manufacturers -- to get into the token business. So, by 1810 there was so little regal coinage in circulation that many localities tolerated and/or encouraged the token issues as a way to keep the wheels of commerce turning.

Tokens were viewed as a pretty good advertising medium too, and in the case of the silver tokens, which had only a two-year run, many cities and county issued their own tokens as well.

That's the simplistic off-the-top-of-my-head summary, of course: whole books have addressed the token coinage, starting with the mid-1600's, in great detail. If you can get your hands on one book in particular -- perhaps through Interlibrary Loan -- I'd recommend British Trade Tokens: A Social and Economic History by J.R.S. Whiting (Drake Publishers, New York, 1970). The first chapter, entitled "Historical Background," addresses all those contributing factors and more, across three centuries.

Nice examples!

Very nice!

@mrwhatisit: Interesting design on the coin from Russia - too bad a previous owner subjected it to such a harsh cleaning!

Also, Congrats! on #600! Did you always imagine that you'd stick around long enough to make the many posts? Glad you're here.

Thanks commems, I didn't know if I was going to stick around this long, but I like helping folk around here if it is something I can help answer, or just to help add to the general body of knowledge. I didn't like the cleaning on that Russian coin but the price was right and it was a coin from there I didn't have yet. That condor token was from my dads former coin collection when he was into coins some 40 years ago, and he held onto them for a long time until I inherited them.

Nice examples!