Brass Token. St. L. P. C. Co. 2

first

The piece looks to be an Identifier Token.

My guess is that it comes from a shipping company and was used to mark crates. The lettering could mean something along the St. Louis Packing & Cartage Company.

This is just a guess, it is only a guess any resemblance to facts, either living or dead is purely coincidental.

I think Tryna was just making a guess at a possible name.

I did some searching last night and I couldn't find anything like it.

It could be a merchant's token.

This is where I was searching: http://tokencatalog.com/

Since you found it in MO, it's easy to assume that St.L stands for St. Louis -- if it doesn't ....yikes! It could be from anywhere.

It is possible that the St. Louis historical society might have some information or try a reference librarian in St. Louis.

I am in no way an expert on these sort of things. But -- if I were to guess, I'd say it's an antique or very nearly.

It may be much older.

It may be a tax token or store token from before the Civil War. Of the tokens that I have seen with very low numbers (like 2 or 2 and 1/2) with plain backs -- seems they were from the territories west of the Mississippi.

I think that telephone tokens and transit tokens had designs on BOTH sides. Those would be 100 (or nearly) years old.

Anyway, you'll probably find out more from a local historian. It's no surprise that you can't find out what it is on the web -- there had to be hundreds of thousands of different tokens from all over that were made for specific purposes and used for a relatively short period of time.

I hope you are able to find out more locally. If you get an answer -- will you let us know?

Greetings from St. Louis. Contact info for the Missouri History Museum is here: http://www.mohistory.org/contact

It is not that uncommon. I have a whole stack of tokens that don't come up in searches. Some of them are even labeled with the state and town. I also have a ton of books that if you were to do a search you would come up empty. Any area of historical study that is less know will also get you into uncharted territory quickly, as far as the internet is concerned.

My only thoughts are is that it is probably pre-1890 because of the incuse design and the shape. I have a couple of tokens of a similar design that can be dated to that time period.