I'm curious if anyone else around here has any picker tokens or tickets. Post them if you have them! It doesn't matter if they're for strawberries, blueberries, grapes, coffee, hops, bananas, blackberries, cranberries, raspberries, dewberries, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cantaloupe, watermelon, peas, cotton, celery, corn, grapefruit, pecans, apples, peaches, cherries, pears, currants, lettuce or whatever else. R.H. Leifer 8 Cents Pierceton, Indiana (Ex: Sydney F. Martin) Probably for some kind of berries since there is a 1 cent, 4 cents and 8 cents token. There's actually a debate whether this a picker token or coal mining token. HY 15 Unattributed Maverick Possibly Henry Yealdhall of Anne Arundel (or Ann Arundell) County, Maryland E.C. Lee 50 Quarts (strawberries) Evergreen, Alabama (Ex: Randy Partin) J.J. Sperandio One Quart (strawberries) Monett, Missouri (Ex: Mike Pfefferkorn) So far only 1 of 2 series of picker tickets I've seen with an image of the produce being picked. There is also a 3 Qt., 6 Qt. and 1 Crate (24 Quarts). Jeff Hartline 25 Quarts Cobden Illinois Probably for strawberries. George K. Howes 4 Quarts Cranberries East Dennis, Massachusetts Tiverton Plantation "2" Wedgefield, South Carolina (Ex: Tony Chibbaro)
Interesting area of American agricultural history. Thank you for sharing. In my travels I have yet to encounter any picker tokens. Were the tokens used for purchasing or were they a form of verification of a picker's labor?
It depends on the issuer. The bank issued tokens were treated as currency in the local area. Nearly all the businesses in the area would take them as money because the bank that sold the tokens to the farmers would accept and redeem them from anyone. The farmers of the area's grower associations would agree on what the picking wage for the year would be (which usually was the same year after year) and this in turn set the value of the tokens. For Southwest Missouri, the wage in the late teens to the early twenties was 3 cents per quart. The use of bank issued tokens in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma ended after the picking season of 1922. "The Numismatist Vol. 36 1923" Other tokens and most picker tickets were issued by the farmer and only redeemable at a certain time (the end of the day, week, month or picking season depending on the farmer) for cash and only from the pickers. Hence the commonly seen phrase, Not Transferable. In many cases the pickers were paid with tokens to keep them in the area until the harvest was over. Byron Lapp of Alexandria, New York, paid his Polish immigrant pickers with tokens that could be used buy pretty much anything in Alexandria except, of all things, railroad tickets. There are also a few picker tokens that could only be used to buy things at the company store.
The closest thing I have is this metal detector find. The local cash "crop" down here is not berries, but shrimp. This token was used both here in my town (Brunswick, GA) and south of here in Saint Augustine, FL.
I couldn't find anything on your two tokens @Heavymetal. I can't even say if they're picker tokens or not because, as you probably know, 2½ and 5 are common denominations for saloons, cigar sellers, restaurants, etc...
I recently discovered four varieties of the E.C. Lee "Peacock Farm" 5 Quart tickets. Both obverse and reverse can have either a pointy tail or curly tail "Q" in "QUART". This creates four varieties: Obv. Curly / Rev. Curly Obv. Curly / Rev. Pointy Obv. Pointy / Rev. Curly Obv. Pointy / Rev. Pointy Curly Obv. Pointy Obv. Curly Rev. Pointy Rev.
This little item brings up images of times past in the Old South: Louisiana Central Lumber 1925 Token Brass, 21 mm, 3.84 gm Obverse: LOUISIANA CENTRAL LUMBER CO. / CLARKS, LA. / GIVEN IN EXCHANGE FOR PRODUCE / 1925 Reverse: Large numeral '5' / GOOD FOR IN MERCHANDISE
I think you're right. Found this in the Louisiana token book (online): "As one may surmise from the wording, the bimetallic set was used by mill employees while the brass pieces were used as "egg money" by the commissary." Looks familiar...
