After my mother died, I came across a small wooden box of coins and tokens from who-knows-where. I did diligent research and was able to finally identify all of them. This was the most difficult and took me several days to find the answer. Can you identify this? Sorry for the blurriness. When I enlarged and cropped the photos, they became blurry. Hints given upon request.
My apologies. You are correct. I just looked up Alladin's Castle Game Token and it is a match, but my research says it was from a now defunct amusement park in Canada, called Sultan's Palace.
You're sharp as a tack today. My research (done several years ago) showed it to be a 1930s Shanghai telephone token. Could it possibly be both?
It may LOOK like an old telephone token, but I am pretty sure it is Modern and made in the U.S. I don't find anything like it when looking for Telephone Tokens.
Do you know why it was made in the U.S.? And when it was made? A quick google didn't turn up any information on it. It's one of the few tokens I've seen with a triangle hole in it.
I am puzzled. If it is indeed a 1930s Shanghai telephone token, why does the inscription on the obverse read "Qian Long Tong Bao" (current coin of Qian Long), copying a standard coin of Qian Long (1735-1796): (image courtesy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qianlong_Tongbao._Bao_Quan.jpg) I would expect it to say something about Shanghai and/or telephones. It does seem to be a modern (i.e. not 18th century) token of some sort, I'm just dubious about it being a telephone token. Of course, I could be wrong, but I would like to see a source for this claim.
This maybe why I thought it was a telephone token. The old Shanghai telephone token which has in a triangle chinese character "8" has a purple ink has also variety with triangle cut out. Please take a look... old Shanghai telephone token with triangle cut out.jpg
@Mountain Man: Thanks for the photo and link. I can see why the triangular hole would stick in your mind- I don't recall seeing that on any other Chinese coin or token- but given that the inscription on the Shanghai telephone token that you linked to is completely different from your piece, I think the triangular hole is a false clue. I don't know your piece's origin for sure, it does seem to be a good luck piece of some sort (the dragon, celestial cloud, and four trigrams all point that way) but I don't know where it was made or when, other than probably 20th century.
We have seen this token more than once on CoinTalk Here is a thread created a few years ago - https://www.cointalk.com/threads/need-help-identifying.264635/#post-2168048
