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How much did you pay for it?
Posted Today 55M ago
It's part of the broad series of state-issued tokens known collectively as "sales tax tokens". 12 states in total issued metal, plastic, fiber or cardboard tokens. 3 other states issued paper stamps or tickets. The schemes were generally launched in the 1930s in the wake of the Depression, mainly to alleviate poor people from paying unfair excess sales tax on small purchases. Carrying around the tokens was inconvenient, not to mention having to acquire new tokens if you crossed the border for your shopping. The constitutionality of states issuing what amounted to their own private currencies also was called into question, though never actually tested in court. Apparently the Federal government considered issuing actual 1 mil coins to replace the state-based token system but dismissed the idea as unwieldy and uneconomical. By the time WWII started, rationing added even further complexity to the things you needed to carry around with you just to buy stuff, not to mention the resources needed to make the tokens were now needed for the war effort. This meant that most token issues were functionally withdrawn during the War and never re-introduced afterwards, though Missouri and Oklahoma kept the token laws on the books until 1961.
The theory was that people could use them to make change for sales taxes, then if they acquired enough they could redeem them at the state treasury for full face value. In the case of the Illinois 1.5 mills token, you'd have needed to trade in 20 tokens to get 3 cents.
Most tokens are not hard to obtain, as mintages were in the millions and lots of people were stuck with them once they became obsolete, and their original face values were all obviously quite low. Assembling a "one-from-each-state" set is not too challenging. The hardest-to-find states are Kansas and Louisiana, I believe, as they only had token laws on the books for a brief period so mintages are generally lower. Some years ago I managed to complete my own one-from-each-state set while living here in Australia, only having to resort to ebay for the Illinois and Kansas examples and not having to pay more than US$5 for any of them.
The theory was that people could use them to make change for sales taxes, then if they acquired enough they could redeem them at the state treasury for full face value. In the case of the Illinois 1.5 mills token, you'd have needed to trade in 20 tokens to get 3 cents.
Most tokens are not hard to obtain, as mintages were in the millions and lots of people were stuck with them once they became obsolete, and their original face values were all obviously quite low. Assembling a "one-from-each-state" set is not too challenging. The hardest-to-find states are Kansas and Louisiana, I believe, as they only had token laws on the books for a brief period so mintages are generally lower. Some years ago I managed to complete my own one-from-each-state set while living here in Australia, only having to resort to ebay for the Illinois and Kansas examples and not having to pay more than US$5 for any of them.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
