I have a little bit of a side interest in CWT - they are as much a part of the history of our country as the war itself - in fact many of them bear testament to the times with patriotic themes etc. One of the areas of interest has been the ones with "Our Little Monitor" with the depiction of the US Navy's first steam powered steel hulled ship with the revolutionary for the time rotating gun. Incredibly I still haven't found one. While perusing through various CWT sites though I came across this one, albeit with a fascinating tale: These are a fairly common die type, with the Union and the Eagle and most were made ca. 1862-3 by the maker. This one from Saginaw Michigan is scarce though, it is listed as "rare" in the Rulau catalogue of 19th century American tokens. It is early in that during those days East Saginaw was the settlement east of the Saginaw River and was then essentially the business side of Saginaw. It corresponds roughly with downtown Saginaw. At some point early in this token's existence it's owner lost it either on the way to or from church. The present church was built later in the 19th century, but the previous church was built earlier and was there during the Civil War. I wonder if it fell out of someone's pocket, was dropped and not found or was even cast off by some mischievous kid. It lay there pretty much undisturbed save occasional upturns from gardening projects over the years. But for nearly 150 years nobody spied it, if in fact, it ever surfaced prior. That is until a cleanup project in the church garden on the 4th of July 2012 - a church member had rototilled the garden and was raking it back down again and noticed what to him looked like a coin peaking out of a clump of soil. For nearly 150 years this token had remained there seemingly lost to eternity. And then on our nation's most patriotic holiday, a patriotic token emerged from all that time in a clump of soil. The finder notified the church hierarchy of the find, and they thought it was an interesting find but were not further interested in it's significance and told the finder to keep it. Eventually through circuitous means I obtained it directly from the church member who had picked it out of the clump back in July. For me the token is scarce, it is patriotic - but coupled with the story of where it had been for nearly 150 years and the coincidence of it being found on the 4th of July made it all the more fascinating.
Thanks for the great story scottishmoney. I also have a soft spot for CWTs and the even rarer sutler tokens of the Civil War. History...history...history. These tokens just fascinate me. Bruce
Nice story on the find. Your token is a Fuld MI280C-1a, R6, if it has a plain edge. If the edge is reeded Fuld classifies it as an MI280C01a1 with a rarity of 9. Both have the #1211 reverse eagle design. Fuld shows a total of seven merchants in East Saginaw used store card tokens.
