Okay, so I know this is a phone token. I know it was made by Geotz up to 1944. But what I would like to know: What does the B and arrow stand for? Some have different letters with the arrow. What does the 10 mean? Thanks.
Years ago people bought their tokens at attended pay stations. The phones in that area would have a device that read the groove, punch and design on the local token to prevent slugs, washers and foriegn currency from being acepted by the machine. Thats why Geotz produced almost 200 different designs of these tokens to accomodate all the specific pay phones.
There is a book about them. Hoping someone on here has it maybe. That would explain the cause for the 10 and the letter on the arrow.
All fine questions but I believe they are unanswerable. This particular token is quite common but there are numerous varierties and this could be one of the tougher ones. These tended to be made in batches of 1000 and most were used in Chicago. Since dies were destroyed after a batch was made any reorders would use slightly different dies. Large percentages of these were rounded up in the scrap drives of WW II and destroyed. Most were used in hotels and had distinctive cut-outs and gouges to prevent cheap holed tokens with lead pounded in touse for nickels. These are what gave rise to the term "plugged nickel". They would make a token that had a similar sound to a nickel striking the bell and the hotel would be out money. The shapes got very complicated. I've got all the catalogs and a host of articals about telephone tokens but can't remember ever seeing an explanation for most of the symbols. "10" is by far the most common number to appear on them. I suspect the letter was used to differentiate very similar tokens of different establishments since there are only some 40 different configurations. I doubt the arrows on this have any meaning other than perhaps point the way the coin fits in the slot. There is a lot of variation in arrow design between varieties. Telephone collecting is becoming so common that these tokens are usually worth about $1.50 even for the common ones. There just aren't all that many of these that survive and telephone card and many others seek these for their collections. These are a lot of fun to collect but most people don't see enough of them to collect them seriously. There are some 650 different just of the Illinois tokens not counting another 400 or so varieties. Some are quite scarce and have more extensive demand. For instance there was one of these issued for the 1933 world's fair that is scarce and in high demand. The most common issues such as the one pictured here had mintages in the 10,000 range and 90% are gone. Some issues suffered much higher attrition because they were in use for a protracted time or were destroyed in the scrap drives or both. They're a wonderful collectible but will never be very popular due to their scarcity and that now they are becoming so widely dispersed. Only 40 years ago it wasn't uncommon to see these in garage sales and flea markets in the Chicago region but they are becoming rarely seen now days. I collected them for years before I even knew what they were!
