Tokens in olden days of England were also known as "pledges of value," Albert R. Frey wrote in his 1917 Dictionary of Numismatic Names.
It remains a first dictionary definition of a token, at least as a numismatic item, that it is a substitute for money. It resembles a coin but it is not government-issued legal tender. It may be exchangeable for legal tender, however, or used as legal tender would be, to procure goods or services on terms set by, or agreed to by, a willing trader.
Richard G. Doty, in The Macmillan Encyclopedic Dictionary of Numismatics (1982), said a token "represents value or coin." R. Scott Carlton, in The International Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Numismatics (1996), said a token is used "in lieu of legal tender coins to compensate for goods or services, to make change where no suitable legal tender coins exist, or to operate various vending or amusement devices."
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MARDI GRAS aluminum "doubloon" has no value except as a "throw," souvenir thrown into crowds.
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There are extended meanings to the word. A rose may be a token of one's love - and then, as will be seen, there are love tokens that numismatists collect. "Token coinage" was a term applied in days when it was thought to be government's duty to put a full dollar's worth of metal into a metal dollar, and then the government didn't.
Token collectors' pursuit extends beyond non-government coin-like pieces with some feature of redeemability.
Start with love tokens. These are a chiefly 19th-century American tradition. A small coin, usually of precious silver or gold, would be carved with initials, or maybe a heart or some other symbol of love, and be presented to a loved one. Often the side to be engraved would first be smoothed down. Some final work was simple, while other pieces might be intricately and artistically rendered.
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NEW YORK CITY Transit Authority fare token is typical even for small towns.
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Two other categories that start with actual coins are encasements and elongates. An encased coin, often just a cent, is surrounded by a metal collar, often soft aluminum, with a commercial message or good-luck wish ("Keep me and never go broke") or some other wording. An elongated coin is run through a geared mechanism that flattens it and raises a new design, often to commemorate some event or record some place.
Some other "tokens" act as membership cards. The "Masonic penny," also called a "mark," is a traditional gift to a new lodge member. Other groups ranging from the Elks to the Ku Klux Klan have issued lodge or chapter tokens.
Businesses have had tokens made not for redeeming merchandise but as the equivalent of a business card. A few decades ago, the Empire Coin Co. operated by Q. David Bowers and James Ruddy gave such pieces as lagniappe (a "freebie") with certain orders. In the 1970s, the private Patrick Mint made small copper tokens inexpensively using stock dies and hand punching, and some who ordered them used the tokens as such promotional items.
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LOVE TOKEN is made from intricate private carving of an initial into this 1839-D Coronet gold $2.50 quarter eagle. Many were made more simply on dimes.
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Stephen P. Alpert and Lawrence E. Elman, in Tokens and Medals: A Guide to the Identification and Values of United States Exonumia (1991), say a medal, as distinguished from a token, is "not issued as a circulating money substitute" and is "usually a commemorative, award, good luck, or similar item." They didn't mention medals created simply as works of art.
Some coin-like objects that are commemorative or "good luck" in nature are variously called tokens or medals by different people, whereas the principal distinction between a medal and a token is that the token is meant to have some utility, preferably in a simple, inexpensive form of manufacture.
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AMUSEMENT TOKEN fits the slot allowing play on an amusement device.
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Private substitutes for money are not generally called tokens when their intrinsic worth and face value are close. The pioneer gold pieces of North Carolina, California and elsewhere beginning in the 1830s are referred to as "private coins" (somewhat of a contradiction in terms) or just "private gold pieces." Likewise, collectors do not refer to the silver Lesher referendum pieces circa 1900 as "tokens."
Token collecting can be pursued many ways. One of the more common is by category of use, such as transportation tokens. Some may want tokens of any kind from a state or other locale. Yet others may pursue topical collections, such as tokens depicting ships or tokens issued by drug stores, or may want a representative from each conceivable category.
In a listing that is by no means exhaustive, here are some interesting categories that exist in the American present or past:
Hard Times tokens: Mostly copper, the size of a large cent, for which they substituted during the depression of the 1830s and early 1840s.
Civil War tokens: Again, money substitutes."Patriotics" carry noncommercial messages, as opposed to "store cards" issued by businesses.
Transportation tokens: Fare tokens can be divided among railroads, ferries, taxis and buses and by road or bridge tolls, etc., and by state and locale.
Casino tokens and chips: When banks stopped getting silver dollars in the 1960s, Nevada's legal casinos commissioned dollar-size slot tokens of their own. Tourists carrying them away as souvenirs made them money-makers of their own. Casino tokens and table chips are now a big field.
Car wash tokens: Another form of transportation token, which can be collected in the same way, by geography.
Prison tokens: This field can be taken down to municipal jail level.
Parking tokens: The first parking meters were placed in Oklahoma in 1935. Yet another form of transportation token, which can be collected in the same way, by geography.
Coal scrip: "Company towns" and "company stores" were erected around mines, where workers lived and spent their earnings, paid in part by metal scrip spendable only in the company store.
Wooden money: The first issues were rectangular, in the 1930s. Now most are round and silver dollar size, and they are called, and even sometimes labeled, "wooden nickels."
Municipal tokens: Local commemoratives redeemable by participating merchants, promoted sometimes by chambers of commerce, sometimes by local historical societies; commonly brass into the 1960s, later commonly plastic or aluminum.
State tax tokens: Issued by several states in values as low as 1 mill (one-tenth cent) when retail sales taxes were enacted in the 1930s; abandoned by the 1960s, because higher rates, inflation and bracketing of prices for tax purposes made whole-cent taxing more accepted.
Food stamp tokens: Multi-colored plastic pieces, often with place names, used to make change for government-aid food coupons in the 1960s and 1970s; rules changes eliminated the rationale for them.
Soap tokens (and cousins): The equivalent of today's clip-out coupons, but metal, put with bars of soap, etc., principally in the 1920s and 1930s.
Military tokens: Used at post exchanges, canteens and other outlets at military bases.
Sutler tokens: Used by private merchants following traveling armies to sell private goods to soldiers.
The possibilities for specialized collections already seem limitless. Yet new goods and services will probably arise, ones unforeseeable now, to create future new categories.
