Elkhorn Coal Token, Info Please

Elkhorn Coal Corporation was a coal mining company based in Kentucky and West Virginia. Its main operations were in the first half of the 20th century. Many of these coal mines were in rural Appalachia so company towns were set up. The mining company would build houses and stores for use by employees and part of the miner's pay would be in store scrip that could only be used in company owned stores. Many times, the miners would have hardly anything left from their paychecks because they had to spend all of their money on provided services which were frequently overpriced due to the monopoly situation.

I was not able to find a rarity or value of your token but most I saw were only worth a few dollars. There are references available though, even one that only lists West Virginia tokens.

There are basically two references and they are actually two volumes of the same catalog. As mentioned one covers JUST West Virginia, the other covers the rest of the country. Why was it divided this way? Because of the huge number of mines in WV that book is actually the larger of the two! Scrip can be interesting to collect since there are so many varieties, and even though many issures are "rare", prices are not high.