A French brothel token, not a French brothel. Sorry for the confusion. I pulled this out of the world junk bucket yesterday. Pretty sure it’s a French brothel token. I can translate the wording but still don’t know much about it. Does anyone have a resource that could show date and/or location of issue? Any additional info is appreciated. Either way pretty happy considering I paid 3 cents for it.
Holy Cow!! You paid 3 cents for an average sales price token valued at $110? That's incredible!! I'm not French but the words appear to say " For your entrance to paradise" (sounds enticing ). On the other side it appears to say " Secure Discretion". Nice TOKEN! I hope I'm right on the translation.
I was gonna say that this sounded more like a "talk to your doctor" moment. Nice pick! I'm not a fan of the "brothel tokens" made as novelties, but this one has some class.
I read the thread title and thought you might be planning a trip to France. This isn't the kind of thing you can find on TripAdvisor, I assume. However, I see it is not to be. Cool token.
Cap D'ail is a commune in France. Numista has a similar token listed for Argentina. My bet is this token is from around the same time period.
What era was that? I can find many women from the 20th and 21st centuries that look better. We can go back to Lillian Gish.
This style of shell cards was popular in France from just after 1871 (the Franco Prussian war) to just after ww2 (when the Code Napoleon & official tolerance of Maison Close ["closed houses" with dedicated prostitutes] came to an end due to its association with Vichy collaboration during the occupation). The Belle Époque was their heyday. I have a small collection. This one is in better condition than most - they tend to degrade quickly with any chemical exposure or damage that pierces the shell. It's strongly suspected that these lacked a denomination because they were used as Brass Checks. That is, they acted as chits or counters where a patron could truthfully say they had never paid for sex (and the Madame could extract whatever degree of markup she wished). If you bought one for 20 Francs & it was later redeemed for 10 Francs, the house was keeping 50% of the transaction (or 100% if you never spent it). Neither the John nor the Courtesan ever knew how much friction was involved in that way. They may also have been more prosaic advertising pieces - anecdotal evidence suggests perhaps some of these tokens were good at the brothel's bar for a drink. My suspicion is that the more common type were used in that way, while the rarer types were redeemable as Brass Checks. No less of a contemporary "expert" than Upton Sinclair writes about the widespread use and understanding of Brass Checks in the sindustry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brass_Check However, only one American token is acknowledged by Rulau as serving the function in his US Tokens 1700-1900. I've got it slabbed (one of only 3 known, if memory serves). Anyone know the token I'm referring to?
Interesting. I've heard this being done with pub checks as well. I don't know the token you are referring to, but I would love to see it!
