Help Identifying Token - Coin Community Forum

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Author	Replies: 5 / Views: 3,649
islandguy201 New Member United States 8 Posts	Posted 09/02/2012 8:50 pm I new to this site and hope you can help me. I am found an old penny safe that my grandfather kept his old change in plus odd coins and tokens. The token is at least 60 years old as he died in the early 1950's. I cannot find anything that will help me identify this token. It is about 1.5 inches in diameter. My first thought is some fraternal order. Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Report this Post to the Staff

Sap Moderator Australia 16831 Posts	Posted 09/02/2012 10:00 pm Hello and welcome. That's an odd piece you've got there, but a bit of Googling found the answers. It's a membership medal for the "Select Templar" degree from a Masonic-style secret society called the Royal Templars of Temperance, a Masonic/Oddfellow counterpart to the various church-based temperance societies that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century. This medal is unissued, or at least was never personalized by its owner; on issued examples of "secret society" medals, blank spaces such as the area inside the triangle on the reverse were often engraved with a symbol chosen by or for that member. This off-topic thread on a photography forum has a medal just like yours but with a member's mark and name engraved on it. On the reverse around the triangle is a typical Masonic-style cypher, an alphabetic-substitution code which initiates into the society would be taught to read. The standard Masonic cypher is based on a tic-tac-toe grid; the "Templars of Temperance" appear to have used a cypher based on the shape of the Templar (Maltese) cross, similar to the one allegedly used by the original Knights Templar during the Crusader period. The society probably died out either before or during the Prohibition era, along with most of the other temperance movements active at the time. So the medal would date from the 1920s at the latest. 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 Report this Post to the Staff
TrickyxMick Valued Member United States 228 Posts	Posted 09/02/2012 10:02 pm wow! Report this Post to the Staff
islandguy201 New Member United States 8 Posts	Posted 09/02/2012 10:18 pm WOW! Thank you! Your Googaling skills are amazing! May I ask how you found it? I've tried every combination of search keywords and I never got anywhere. Thank you so much!! John Report this Post to the Staff
Sap Moderator Australia 16831 Posts	Posted 09/02/2012 11:48 pm I thought the piece looked vaguely like other Secret Society tokens, especially Masonic "Royal Arch Mason" pennies which we've seen quite often on the forum, like here. And the strange geometric shapes on the back looked distinctly like a Masonic-style cypher. So after a few false starts I googled "Masonic triangle star LFU" (forcing "LFU" in quotes so it didn't find "FLU"), and the photo forum was the top hit. Following the links in the photo forum and googling "Royal Templars of Temperance" found the rest. As you can see from the earlier thread and presumably from your own attempts at doing so, googling the letters as they read naturally, such as "TSRTDCTAV", doesn't necessarily work, since that may not be the actual correct order the abbreviated message on the token is supposed to be read. Trying different combinations (like "TAVTSRTDC") might eventually get you there, though you might have to try all nine possible arrangements of those letters to discover the true order. If the old archived book linked to in the photo forum is correct, then the true order of the lettering is "VTSRTDCTA". But it's ultimately all "secret society stuff"; you probably need to find an old member of the order to find out what the secret meaning of the letters really is. It's even entirely likely that different degrees within the RToT assigned different meanings to the same letters. 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 Report this Post to the Staff
carmykle Pillar of the Community United States 2448 Posts	Posted 09/03/2012 12:07 pm Wow, there is no limit to the talent and ability of this forum. I tried just what you said to do and my computer shut down. Great find. Report this Post to the Staff
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