From Michigan and with a rarity of 9 and only a small amount are known to exist. This one is quite nice. Gardner was a woolen manufacturer from Jonesville, Michigan.
Nice. But I have to ask where the "Rarity 9" derives? The Sheldon rarity scale stops at 8. Is there another scale for HTTs or merchant tokens?
I just remembered another scale: Universal Rarity Scale (URS). That scale runs from 1, the rarest, to 15, most common.
Sheldon rarity scale does have a 9 which means unique. The granularity on that scale seems rather useless to me. If there are thousands of collectors an R-1 can still take years to obtain if it's on the low end of 1250+ or have hundreds available at any given time if it's way out on R-1. URS makes more sense as a simple geometric progression. URS-9 = 125 to 249 makes sense for this one.
Neat token. It has that quintessential 19th century look. I like the eagle. PS- is that a CWT, or from that era?
I’m not sure when it was made, just that it’s a tough one to obtain as not many are known to exist. And this is one of the better ones.
The die sinker was James Gleason. He was known for the "Michigan primitives." The Indiana primitives, made by Henry Higgins, are more popular, but Gleason has his followers. Gleason used his home business die with the eagle on it for this token. The rarity scale for Civil War tokens is not the same as the Sheldon scale. Here it is from one of the reference books.
