Trade Token Identified (Sort Of)

Thank you, Hondo. I thought it looked familiar, but did not find the topic.

I think that these date from the 1950s or earlier, so anyone who used them is well advanced in years.

I think you'd find that these tokens tend to be even earlier than the 1950s; my best guess would be 1890-1930, plus or minus a decade either side. The very few tokens of this style and type that actually bear dates tend to be in that range.

And as I said in the old thread, many of these generic tokens would have been used for quasi-legal and downright illegal gambling, in slot machines of various kinds. And, ones dating from the 1920s would also likely have been used in Prohibition-avoiding speakeasys and other illegal drinking establishments. Either way, nobody except the token-makers were keeping records of who used what token, and very few of that generation are alive and looking on Internet coin forums.

There would have been some tokens used for non-nefarious purposes, but again, it would have been smaller stores and businesses that didn't want to spend the money to create their own personalized dies for their tokens.