A year before the Civil War ended, diesinkers and manufacturers of that period's patriotic tokens and store cards found themselves with less business because of an April 1864 act that essentially banned the issuance of the cent-size emergency money substitutes. The firms found a new vehicle and a legal alternative to the cent-sized tokens in the form of American store cards referred to as shell cards.
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Images used with permission from A Guide Book of United States Tokens and Medals by Katherine Jaeger; © Whitman Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved. One of the more popular stock obverse designs for shell cards was this Liberty Head, which resembles the Coronet design used on U.S. gold eagles and double eagles. The issuer was Barry & Patten in San Francisco.
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One popular shell card obverse carries a design resembling Christian Gobrecht's designs for Seated Liberty coinage. While the actual silver coins exhibit 13 stars on some of the issues, some of the firm's shell card designs exhibit 15 stars, as does the one shown.
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Intact shell cards dated 1776, like this one, though struck well after that date, are rare and valued in the hundreds of dollars. The obverse design resembles that used on U.S. Draped Bust dollars.
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Another type of shell card, produced by the Mica Manufacturing Co. in New York City, had clear mica faces to protect the printed inserts.
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Mirror cards are shell cards with the brass shell bearing the embossed advertising on the obverse and a functional mirror incorporated as the reverse. Shown is a piece issued by a Pittsburgh supplier of crackers to grocery stores.
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The Mica Manufacturing Co. produced this mica shell card issued by J. Wisner & Son in Martinsburg, W.Va., to advertise the sale by Alta Vela Guano Co. of guano, or bat manure, a popular 19th century and 20th century fertilizer.
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A portrait of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant can be found on the obverse of this 1868 shell card issued by R. Armstrong, an ice cream and refreshment saloon located on Richmond Street in Philadelphia.
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Shell cards are metallic advertising pieces that sometimes doubled as tokens. They were produced in various sizes (larger than the cent-sized Civil War tokens). As their name implies, their manufacture involved one or both sides being a hollow shell.
Several different kinds of shell cards were produced.
An embossed card is a type of shell card where the design, sometimes nearly replicating a U.S. coin design, is embossed in the metal of one or both sides.
Another type of shell card is a mirror card, sometimes called a "looking-glass" card. One half of the card is a functional mirror. The nonmirror side may or may not be embossed. Some mirror cards have the obverse design covered by a mica face.
Some longtime collectors and researchers of the series suggest the purpose of the shell cards was not strictly advertising, since one side often resembles the obverse or reverse of circulating coinage. Some shell cards bear a message "good for" a particular value in merchandise.
The shell card heyday, when most of the cards were made, was between 1866 and 1876. Individual manufacturers obtained patents to produce various types of cards according to their production method.
Many pieces are dated 1868 or 1876, with a few extremely rare pieces dated 1776.
Steve Tanenbaum, a token and medal dealer in New York who has collected shell cards for more than 35 years, said as many as 2,000 or more total cards of several types may be collectible when one counts all of the different varieties.
Tanenbaum believes production of the shell cards was in reaction to the loss of business diesinkers and private minters experienced near the ending of the war.
The Act of April 22, 1864, which authorized the bronze cent and 2-cent coins, also banned the production and circulation of tokens intended to circulate as those two denominations. The act's passage, in essence, banned all cent-size Civil War tokens – of which more than 10,000 different types were issued – by making their production and release criminal acts.
Tanenbaum said he has 600 to 700 pieces in his shell card collection, many with only one or two pieces known. He suspects more than half of the pieces in his collection are unlisted in any catalog on the subject. He said in his collecting experience, the pieces he does find are either Uncirculated or nearly so (the result of being properly cared for), or heavily damaged because their flimsy structure did not hold up to being carried as a pocket piece.
Some pieces may be obtained for less than $100 each, while others may cost several hundred dollars each, Tanenbaum said.
Tanenbaum estimates that 55 percent of the shell cards made are composed from two shells; a composition of one embossed metal shell and a cardboard backing accounts for 35 percent; and the remaining 10 percent are mirror cards.
Some pieces with printed inserts had mica covers to protect the printing.
Many merchants who issued Civil War store cards are also believed to have issued shell cards, but in what numbers, no one really knows, Tanenbaum said. Manufacturers of shell cards, in some instances, were also previously manufacturers and issuers of Civil War store cards.
Different looks
According to Tanenbaum, several types of shell cards exist. Some shell cards are found with just one shell, usually brass, which is embossed from the back with the intended design appearing as raised on the viewed side. The shell is reinforced with cardboard on which a paper label is added bearing a merchant's advertising information.
In addition, shell cards are known in copper, silver, gilt and silvered over a base metal.
A flange around the border is often then crimped around the cardboard to keep the advertising in place. Others have wire tabs that are bent over to hold in place the card material with its printed advertising.
Types can be differentiated based on the shell design. Tanenbaum said the most popular designs were the Coronet or Liberty Head portrait used on gold $10 eagles and $20 double eagles, the Seated Liberty dollar obverse and the eagle reverse from the Trade dollar.
Researchers have identified different varieties of the Coronet, Seated Liberty and Trade dollar eagle reverse designs, with subtle modifications to the basic main device.
The cards were often produced in the size of the coin they mimicked.
Obverse designs also include a bison, individual portraits of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant, and someone riding a horse bareback.
Different colors on the advertising cardboard or slight modifications in the inscriptions also characterize different varieties.
Tanenbaum said from his collecting and dealing experience, some issuers that released shell cards with cardboard backing had their advertising in black ink but used a multitude of individual colors of cardboard; for example, black ink on blue cardboard, black on green, black on pink and so on.
Other shell cards, manufactured from two metal shells, have the main design on the obverse, often dated, with the reverse devoted to the merchant's advertising. Cardboard or other similar material is between the two shells for strength, and a separate strip of brass fashioned as a band or collar secures the two shells together.
Tanenbaum said it is possible to identify manufacturers of some shell cards by comparing the engraving of the designs with the engravings for specific Civil War store cards whose manufacturers are known.
Although most of the shell cards bear a date on their obverse side, Tanenbaum said, it is likely some issues are back-dated, for whatever reason.
Cataloging
No single comprehensive list catalogs all shell cards, embossed cards or mirror cards, though some such efforts have been made.
The first conscientious attempt to catalog such issues was by J.M. Tilton in 1881. Tilton published his listing in the Numismatic Directory.
The next attempt was made by Harry A. Gray in the January 1920 issue of the American Numismatic Association journal, The Numismatist. Gray's assessment was based on his review of nearly six dozen W.E. Woodward auction catalogs.
Perhaps the most in-depth study and listing was undertaken in the 1960s by collector Ralph A. "Curly" Mitchell, with collaboration from token researchers Russell Rulau, Leo A. Young, James J. Curto, Max M. Schwartz, Maurice M. Gould, Melvin and George Fuld and others.
The first segment of Mitchell's multipart series about shell cards was published in the inaugural, April 1961, quarterly bulletin of the Society of Token, Medal & Obsolete Paper Money Collectors. Mitchell, building on Tilton's original research, added information using pieces from the collections of the other researchers mentioned. The organization that published the series is now known as the Token and Medal Society.
The idea for Mitchell's series of articles, which ran in consecutive bulletin issues for several years, was born out of the Dec. 4, 1960, founders meeting of the Southern California Exonumist Society.
Mitchell noted in his premiere article that his contribution to the numismatic knowledge on shell cards was just a start. He also drew upon research by Charles W. Foster, Waldo C. Moore and Arlie Slabaugh.
Paul Cunningham, a token and medal dealer who has published the TAMS Journal for many years, reprinted Mitchell's work in the journal beginning with the October 2005 issue, with many updates and revisions.
Mitchell said in his first article that many of the 355 varieties that were listed in Tilton's work had not been found and while he listed them in his work, the descriptions of the pieces are "based largely on conjecture."
Tilton's personal collection, numbering 333 pieces, was sold by Woodward on April 30, 1886, for a total sum of $5. Many of the pieces were sold in lots of multiple cards.
Issuers and manufacturers
Tanenbaum estimates that 60 percent of shell card issuers were from New York; 30 percent were divided among Pennsylvania, Ohio and Massachusetts; and the remaining 10 percent were from cities in other states.
Murdock & Spencer in Cincinnati, a prolific manufacturer and issuer of Civil War store cards, also produced and issued shell cards, as did Joseph J. Sayre in Cincinnati and J.F.W. Dorman in Baltimore.
Mitchell listed other manufacturers who also issued shell cards:
From Philadelphia: John Davey; Key & Co.; and Mace & Bros.
From New York City: G. Kalkbrenner; Stafford Bros.; A. Demarest; Drowne; and Richards & Markt.
From other locations: Read & Cordis from Longmeadow, Mass; S.J. Hoggson from New Haven, Conn.; and Shreve & Co. from San Francisco.
Many mirror cards are credited with having been manufactured by T.N. Hickcox and Co. from New York City.
A more prolific issuer of shell cards was Howe Scales. Howe Scales shell cards were issued from Brandon, Vt., printed with advertising reading the improved howes scale centennial; or howe scales; or the improved howe scales.
From New York, Howe pieces appear inscribed as howe's standard scales, or howe improved standard scales.
Shell card researcher Arlie Slabaugh noted that the 1876 varieties of the Howe cards had varying weights entered in ink by the issuer.
"It has been conjectured that these weights were entered by weight-guessing artists at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, as an advertising gimmick, and that the embossed cards served as ‘prizes' with each person's weight," according to Slabaugh in Mitchell's article in the July 1961 quarterly bulletin of the Society of Token, Medal & Obsolete Paper Money Collectors.
Collectors and dealers in this esoteric area of exonumia note that shell cards don't appear on the market very often and are usually quickly purchased when they do appear.
