Tim Horton's Numismatics
You will never meet two numismatists exactly the same. When I go to a coin show I skip past the silver dollars and start digging through the 50 cent token bins. Is it because I am poor, a wee bit, is it because I love the local history expressed on each token and the thrill of hunting for an allusive piece? Yes. It is a 60/40 thing. Collecting is such a personal thing everyone you know will do it differently. As far as collecting goes I am already an odd ball (chartered bank cheques, New Brunswick Railroad stock certificates, Wooden nickels) but I think I found a new way to be even more of an outlier.
Most recently I have been getting involved in a new area of Canadian numismatics, a field I call "Tim Horton's numismatics".
It all started when the Florencville Collector Society closed for the season. You see my local coin club is a tad bit oxymoronic. I have to go two towns over to get there. A fellow member lives out in Richmond parish (as do I) so he offered to pick me up and take me up with him to the club. He is an older gentlemen in his 80's and I have really enjoyed the conversations we have had and the fact that he went out of his way to help me out. As he dropped me off at my place after the last club meeting I gave him a Tim's Card as a thank you.
This was the only card they had in stock at the Main street Tim Horton's in Woodstock, N.B. . Not the most appropriate card (not that it really matters) but I was kind of hopping for a "thank you" card or something. I didn't think much about it until a week later. Once a month I make an hour long trek down to Fredericton to see an O.C.D. specialist. Being a manly man I can drive from my place to Cape Breton Island without having to make one pit stop, sadly my mother needs to stop in every community to pee. As we made our usual Tim Horton's coffee/bathroom stop in Freddy I noticed this.
Yes, a thank you card. I knew what I had to do, collect them! On the off chance someone was as unhinged as me when it comes to collecting I Googled "Tim Horton Hortons Horton's gift card collector collection". Sure enough I found this website
http://thetimcardcollector.com/It was all about Tim card collecting. Now you may be wondering what does this have to do with coin collecting? Absolutely nothing. What we have to remember is that numismatics is a distinct academic discipline separate from coin collecting that deals with studying the history, evolution and sociological effects of the exchange of goods and payment of debt. In that broader sense Tim Cards really do belong in any Canadian numismatic museum as they settle our debt at Tim's.
As we look closer at the cards you will notice several uniquely Canadian themes and regional varieties that speak to said community. This is especially true in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. So many first dates, after bonspiel outings and general "catching up" is done at the Tim Hortons in our local communities. They also fund many camp and sporting activities for our more economically disadvantaged children.
Woodstock Slammers!
In my community the only guys cooler than the numismatists are the semi-pro hockey players. Here are some of the many cards available for the Maritime Hockey League.
Tim cards started being issued in 2007. Before that we had several different gift certificates varieties, as you can see at the link below.
http://thetimcardcollector.com/certs.htmlI have written an email to the owner of the Tim Card site with general questions and he was gracious enough to send me some of the older general stock cards. This is another reason why I love token collecting. I have given away and received more tokens for free then I ever have with coins. I have yet to receive them but I can't wait to see them in person! The thing with Tim Horton's numismatics is I am standing on the shoulders of Giants. Where the cards end I decided I should pick up the torch and come at this as an exonumismatist and as a coin collector.
To continue to grow the field of Tim Horton numismatics I decided to take a look at some tokens. The first token I guess is rare? One was listed on
ebay for $100 and another was listed for $60. I know S.P.P. has one and I know a guy who actively collects Maritime tokens so I plan on emailing him for mintage numbers etc. .
Back in 1962-1963 Salada Tea gave away promotional tokens. They were rounded examples of the Parkhurst hockey cards of the same year. That hockey card set is most notable in the collector world as featuring Tim Horton's rookie card.
In 2008 up for sale was the "Toronto Maple Leafs All-Time Great Medallion Collections. Tim Horton was once again featured
Remember how I mentioned that Tim Horton's sponsors a lot of sports in Atlantic Canada? Well with all these sports comes medals. Here is a particularly heart warming story involving one of them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/0...1776018.htmlBack in 2012, Canada, who was awarded the bronze medal in the men's 4*100 relay race, was sadly stripped of it 7 minutes later. In a video review of the race judges see that Jarred Connaughton stepped on one of the chalk lines. When this came out one young lad from Paradise, NFLD sent him his Timbits medal to make him feel better.
I am still trying to track down a promotional silver round put out. I found no information on this.
Now let us look in the realm of non circulating legal tender (NCLT). A lot of people dismiss these coins as "granny bait" and "worthless". Although a lot of said coins do not appreciate in the secondary market, are hoarded by "investors" and have become gimmicky over the past 5 years we can all agree that originally they were amazing pieces of medallic art that showed off our proud heritage. Part of our proud heritage is Tim Horton.
In 2005 the
Royal Canadian Mint put out a 4 coin 50 cent set showing 4 legends of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Here is the defense men in all his glory!
He was also included in the 2003 NHL All stars set. This is technically not a coin as it has no value but rather a
Royal Canadian Mint medallion and stamp.
Now here is a coin that does not feature Tim Horton but yet is tied to his name sake restaurant, the 2004 Poppy quarter. This coin was the first coloured coin to ever be put into circulation. It was distributed in change at Tim Horton's. If having a world wide first associated with Canada isn't enough to be noteworthy this coin was thought to be a "spy coin".
Insert poppy, link and quote.
http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/cor....php?id=7526http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/p...ngs-1.649741
Quote:The surprise explanation behind the U.S. government's sensational but false warnings about mysterious Canadian spy coins is the harmless poppy quarter, the world's first colourized coin.
The odd-looking coins were so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them.
The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something manmade that looked like nanotechnology," said once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails.
The 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy inlaid over a maple leaf. The quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts.
The supposed nanotechnology actually was a conventional protective coating the
Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red colour from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.
"It did not appear to be electronic [analog] in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car.
Well, I am sure I overlooked some tokens/coins. Hopefully someone reading this can contribute some more to the rapidly growing field of Tim Horton's numismatics.
Posted 07/01/2016 7:57 pm
