I am not an expert in shell card tokens, so I can not tell you exactly the value, but I hope that somebody more experienced in this area can give you some good input.
It is id B-NY-6882 in TAMS Guide to U.S. Shell Cards 1867-1880. It also has the id of Rulau-455. The maker is listed as T.N. Hickcox & Co. I have a number of Rulau's references, but not one with that listing, which is unfortunate as Rulau sometimes provides values. This shell card was issued without the hole. Shell cards are a little on the pricey side, with nice examples typically selling for hundreds of dollars. They are not offered all that often (a search on ebay for "shell cards" had about 10 results for ALL varieties of U.S. issued shell cards as compared to 554 results when searching for "1909 s vdb". Just my opinion, if you were to sell it on ebay, I think you could get at least in the $50 ballpark for it.
I don’t have any merchant shell cards, but I do have a few pieces issued for pre-Civil War candidates like Henry Clay and Zachary Taylor. These pieces are scarce because they are far more fragile than solid metal tokens. They are made by embossing two thin disks of metal and joining them together with a bezel. They are easily dented. I am surprised that the OP piece is as nice as it is given that it has had a hole drilled in it. Usually doing that to it would incurred more damage.
That is very interesting. I do not have any shell cards, and in-fact it had just come to me that that is why they are called "shell cards." I did not realize that is how they were made until a few days ago.
I concur with the $50 price estimate. Shell cards are genuinely rare, due to their fragility & their perceived lack of value (both back in the day & by collectors who don't recognize their scarcity). For some reason, a significant number of the Petit Mignon & Maison Close tokens were made as shell cards, & those are even harder to find than more "respectable" merchant tokens.
