SHOPPING TOKENS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 14 September 1940, Page 14

SHOPPING TOKENS.

i » I WASTE RECLAMATION.| i —- ! j INTERESTING COLLECTION. ! ! i

WELLINGTON, this day. !

Tlie most unexpected contribution to| the waste reclamation drive in Welling-! ton so far has been a quite remarkable collection, gathered toge.ther probably over many years, of the once popular and j now long illegal shopping token coins.' The donor, who does not wish her name to be published, suggested that tintokens have, a greater value to collectors than as scrap bronze, and the committee! has sent them to the Wellington Numis- j unities Society. There are about 200 of | them.

Most of them are about a penny size, but some aro pocket breakers, double the weight and more. They date from lS.i."> to 1881, for soon after that they were recognised as an infernal nuisance among ollicial coinage and were banned by law. But while the tokeai value lasted, tokens were the business rage, to be handed out in small change, as discount tokens or as advertising. This boxful includes quite a few from old Wellington firms, not many of them in existence now, but the collection is properly representative of all New Zealand, with more from Sydney and "Hobart Town," London and Dublin. The hotels had them for change on "pints" (Imperial 20-ounce pints), good, in sufficient number, for more pints, at the same hotel. Grocers, drapers, tailors, ironmongers, jewellers, So-and-So's pills and ointment, a music shop, paperhanger-. butchers and leather-merchants of the 'fifties to 'eighties contributed to the riot of unofficial coinage. There are. one or two puzzlers in the collection, "pure copper preferable to paj>er," for instance, and the weight is made up with handstamped coins from the East, and odds and ends of old-time British and foreign coins.

The numismatist has his own ideas about the value of old coins, tokens and medallions, and whereas a lot of people add value for every dent and bend and defamation, the collector who knows passes these bashed old relics coldly and likes his in mint or nearly mint condition. So, after all. a good number of this gathering of 200 token curiosities will, unless someone pays more, than their real collection value, because this is a patriotic purpose, be worth their metal value and no more.