7/15/18 Report - A Few Token Finds and A Nice Article About Collecting Tokens. Mystery Token.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Mystery Token.

If you are a detectorist you probably find an occasional token.  Most are modern and come from game rooms like Chuck E. Cheese.  Most common tokens probably get tossed aside, but maybe you should take another look at your token finds.  Many can be interesting, and there are some that can be worth something.  I sold a variety of common tokens back a number of years ago.

The above token has a picture of a naked lady that I've seen referred to as Busty Betty.  She appears on other tokens (which I've found) exactly as shown on this one, but on one other token her top is shown on one side of the token with the words Heads I Win, and her bottom is shown on the other side with the words Tales You Loose.  That all makes sense to me.

The token shown above (obviously uncleaned) has exactly the same picture of Betty but different words. The words of the first side says, COMPLETE READING, and the other side says, YOUR BEST SOURCE OF SUPPLIES.  There is no company name or anything like that, so what is this token for?  I have an idea, but I want to get your ideas first.  What do you make of this token?

I ran across an excellent article on exonumia in CoinWeek: Exploring Tokens and Medals Through the Eyes of a Longtime Coin Collector, by Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez - January 22, 2018.  You might want to read the entire article (just click on the link above).  Below are a few excerpts.

In the 1980s, gaming chips reigned. So, where are the opportunities today?

“Items they haven’t written books about,” he says. “There are lots of Mardi Gras doubloons that were dumped during the parades in New Orleans, but there isn’t a book about those and you can buy them for perhaps a quarter or so each."...

Many tokens are produced by merchants, and they are frequently used as advertisements, coupons, or for exchange by customers to redeem goods or services. I can personally attest to using countless tokens for playing arcade games, claiming free cookies at restaurants when I was a child, or riding subways during my visits to New York many years ago. I’m sure you’ve probably had similar experiences with many of the tokens you’ve handled, too. Tokens are all too often used and abused, usually ending up on return trips to their places of origin to be discarded or recycled.

And many tokens are simply lost, dissolving to oblivion in the abrasive sands of time.

“Most tokens are rare,” confirms Kiser, a 30-something who started collecting tokens when he was seven years old after discovering an old New Mexico token as a metal-detecting find in an early 1900s-era dump in southern New Mexico. “For example, when it comes to New Mexico, there about 2,000 different tokens known from that state, and about 1,000 of those have only one to three pieces known to exist. This makes most tokens far more rare than even the rarest of coins.”

Kiser understands this firsthand, too. He wrote New Mexico Trade Tokens, a reference book and price guide drawing from his nearly lifelong passion for tokens from the state known as the Land of Enchantment.

“Most of these tokens, speaking again only in reference to New Mexico tokens, are worth anywhere from $100 to $1,000,” he says. “The price would be even higher, but the demand is not there to drive the price up – there are only about six to eight people who collect New Mexico tokens. Compare that to the thousands of people nationwide who collect Mercury dimes and want a 1916-D for their collection.”

He estimates the number of people actively involved in token collecting is approximately 1,000 to 2,000 nationwide...

It seems to me that there are many opportunities for the token collector.  You can inexpensively build a significant collection, and there are good opportunities for price appreciation.  In coin collecting, there isn't much chance that you can be anything other than a very small fish in a very big pond.  That is not the case if you choose to build a nice token collection.

Sonesta Beach Hotel Tokens - One Free Drink.
Two Identical Tokens.

Due to the amount of tourism, you'll find tokens from around the country and around the world in Florida.

Here is transportation token for the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, for example.

Garden State Parkway Token Found in Florida

And here is one of my first with a little history to it.  I distinctly remember where it was found.

Miami Cafeteria Token.

This side reads FINE CAFETERIA FOODS AT 8600 BISCAYNE.  Below is the other side.

Miami Cafeteria Token
This side reads HAVE YOU HAD IT LATELY - TURN OVER PLEASE.

So we know the purpose of this one.  It is clear enough.

I found this one not too far from the address on the token.  It was at the site of a trailer park that had been removed.  The site was now in a park close to a historic natural bridge.  There was a banyon tree growing out of a shell midden very close to the natural bridge.  I once saw a photo of Thomas Edison standing below that banyan tree collecting artifacts.

I just showed a few tokens today and hope that you might be a little more interested in those that you find.  There are older ones.  I didn't happen to show my oldest ones today.

Beaches can be tough on tokens.  They are often in poor condition.

Here is the link to the article that I referred to above.

https://coinweek.com/coins/coin-collecting-strategies-2/exploring-tokens-medals-eyes-longtime-coin-collector/

I've been really busy lately looking at a lot of different finds.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net