It's Raining Cats and Dogs - Check out my new Conder Token!

I picked this beauty up at the FUN show from Ron Sirna (who's also the ANA legal counsel). I just fell in love with these cute little guys, and couldn't resist buying this one, though it set me back quite a bit! I understand this design is one of the more rare Conder tokens and even more rare in this condition.

 

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Very nice Conder PL and yes, that's a rare one alright! good pickup! :thumb:

 

Nice pick-up! I especially like the feline on that token. TC

 

Congratulations on your addition and "thanks" for sharing the photo!

 

Very nice.

 

If I remember right, wasn't Topcat a Saturday morning cartoon (we called them "cartoons" in my day, instead of "animation")

So, just for you Topcat, here's another little kitty for your viewing pleasure (however, it's the same kitty just muled with a different obverse).

 

Fabulous, Charmy !

Now get ready for the big debate 'twixt Cat People and Dog People as to which side is the "money side" !

 

Great tokens Penny Lady!

 

Great tokens! Love the color on them in the pictures.

 

Great looking tokens. Don't float away there in southern california though. Y'all's whole state is liable to float away here sometime soon.....:smile

 

Ha! I was born and raised in SoCal and I've been hearing that since I was a little kid!

Btw, here's another little kitty token ...

 

house cat

Very nice tokens & cats. I don't have many Conder tokens or cat coins. Here is a cat from an Iranian coin:

 

The color on the Penny Lady tokens is great. Here is some psychedelic toning on an Iranian lion which I traded away last year.

 

Collect89, That's one pretty kitty!

 

dumb question

What, exactly, is a token? Was it used as money, or what? And who is Conder? I guess I could look that up, but all the best experts are right here on CT.

 

long story short

Hello Squaredealer,

Tokens are issued privately and used in trade just like government money (except they are issued privately and not issued by a government). They may be redemable by the merchant for goods, services, gold, silver, or government money. It depends on the issue.

Medals are not used in trade. Medals commemorate some event, person, or thing.

Conder is the name of a guy that cataloged the merchant tokens which were issued in England back before 1800 (or there-abouts). They are called Conder tokens if they are 18th century tokens cataloged by Conder. Later tokens seem to be called merchant tokens. There are some great threads here describing Conder tokens and there are a couple resident experts here at CT. I suggest you search the word Conder & have a good read.

Very best regards,
collect89

 

To be more specific about Conder, his name was James Conder and he was a draper who lived in the city of Ipswich in the county of Suffolk, England. He also issued his own tokens around 1795. Due to the lack of good regal coinage for circulation a tremendous number of privately issued tokens were produced for circulation during the 1787 to 1800 period. With so many different varieties being available the collecting of these tokens became a popular pastime. Two or three different people produced catalogs of the available tokens during this period. Conder was not the first but he produced two editions of his book, one in 1795 and a second edition in 1798. Although it wasn't the first, it was probably the most comprehensive and it became the standard reference for these tokens from 1798 until the Atkins reference was published in 1890. (How they used the book I'll never know. No pictures, and since many issues used multiple dies of the same design you would have the design described for the first variety and then a bunch more afterwards each listed as "Another, differently arranged".) Since the tokens were collected by the numbers in his reference they became known as Conder tokens on this side of the Atlantic. (In England they are still referred to as 18th century provincial tokens.)

Now as to what a "draper" is I'm afraid I'm not sure. I have seen it referred to as someone who made and sold draperies, but considering the number of "drapers" who issued tokens and the number of references I have seen to Drapers it would seem to require about 10% of the population would be dealing in draperies. I seriously doubt if any but the very wealthy had any use for draperies, so they would not have need that many dealers in them. I suspect the term actually means someone who deals in cloth or drygoods, and mainly cloth for clothing. (Dealers in cloth for sails had a different name.) Considering that England was a major supplier/exporter of cloth at the time, especially wool cloth, this would make sense.