A Continuing Thread ~ Post Your Tokens, Medals, Exonumia Acquisitions

Thanks, Hondo Boguss. It does look to be a common theme of the times.

W. R. Pickering Lumber Co. - Pickering, LA
From Crawford and Farber, Louisiana Trade Tokens (2nd Ed.): "Pickering Lumber Company was organized in 1894 in Kansas City, MO, and headquartered in that city. This was a double band sawmill in business from 1898 until 1927, when operations moved to Standard, CA. The company had branches at Barham and Cravens, LA* and at Haslam and Wellborn, TX, where tokens were also issued. ... The Pickering mill had a capacity of 275,000 board feet and a railroad, the Louisiana Central Railroad, with over thirty miles of track. ..."

As daltonista and I discussed earlier, the time to get a rare token is when you see it. This one is scratched, but because C&F list it as R10 it will probably be quite a while before I encounter another.


* see http://goccf.com/t/445206 for a discussion of my Pickering token from Cravens.

Centennial of Germans from Russia in Dakota Territory

The very first settlement of the German-Russians in the Middle West, specifically Dakota Territory, occurred in the spring of 1873. This settlement was a direct result of Ludwig Bette's visit to the colony Johannestal in 1872 when he influenced four groups from the Black Sea area to emigrate to the United States. The four groups, numbering 175 men, women, and children, were united at Sandusky, Ohio, where they spent the winter. In the spring, scouts were sent out in search of land who determined that Dakota Territory was the place for them to settle. They loaded their belongings on a special freight train, possibly one or two passenger cars, and a few box cars, and took off for Yankton, Dakota Territory. They arrived there in one of the worst blizzards on record, and many thought the country was worse than Siberia. This is known as the Easter Sunday Blizzard, occurring in April of 1873. After the weather cleared, they searched for suitable land on which to homestead, finding land where Lesterville, South Dakota, is now located, about eighteen miles northwest of Yankton.

very nice additions.

I made a connection with an old-timer in my home town who has been collecting trade tokens for 50+ years. We have been making trades and I've been able to add quite a few R8, R9, and R10s to my collection. I've uploaded at least 8 images and made a new listing on tokencatalog.
This is the unlisted one. I know members of the Lamperez family and will contact them to see if they can provide any information.

Thank you, Errers! These tokens almost NEVER come up for auction, and on the rare occasion they do the price goes through the roof! There are far more collectors than available tokens, so the market has gone crazy. I was very lucky to befriend this fellow.

Very nice paralyse! Pretty cool that it came out of a collection, from the 1960's.