A Couple Tokens Lying Around

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me either but here's some clarification:

Overseas there was no U.S. coinage except what service members brought with them, especially in Vietnam. So to make change tokens were purchased from Japanese companies.

The club system, both stateside and overseas, would extend credit after the tenth day of the month. The coinage was for use in the clubs and to operate the slot machines. The base or post exchanges which operated to sell goods to service members used them as well.

Going to present day - there still isn't US coinage at bases in the war zones. They use POGs which are made of styrene because it's cheaper to ship those than coins. Here in England only the DoD bank and the Post Office has cents and the rest of the stores just round everything up or down.

These forms of military monies go back to at least the Civil War with the sutler system.

If this doesn't make sense let me know! I like to talk about them!

 

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Great question, Jack, and an informative answer. Frankly, i never knew the reason for issuing these pieces, but suspected it might be partially because of the lack of U.S. money overseas.

Bruce

 

No change overseas was just part of it. Why stateside? Slot machines were a big deal and they were on every base in every state until the law changed. Now you'll only find them overseas. Once the slot machines went away, the clubs still needed to extend credit and this is how they did it. Today the club system is failing and at risk of being shut down. They still extend credit, however it's now through Visa and I believe this is a big reason club membership is down. No one wants to fill out a credit card application to become a member. Well...some do but it's rare. There's more to it as well and I can only speak of my experiences with Air Force clubs.

 

I would think that it would be just as easy, or even easier, to ship US coins to a base, rather than order special tokens. Especially stateside. But I guess "easy and sensible" might be frowned upon in the military (just kidding). Could it be some kind of security thing?

 

In Vietnam they went to military payment certificates to replace US dollars and change but that didn't happen until 1970 (I may be off on the year...but it's close). Tokens were still used to operate the machines and to act as credit. Also with the clubs extending credit using the tokens they were trying to discourage spending off base. The Air Force made massive amounts during the Cold War era and I can only speculate why. I think part of it is because during the early years of the Cold War the Air Force was the largest it has ever been - 1954-1957 the Air Force had over 900,000 people in it. '58-'67 end strength numbers were in the 800,000s and crept back up to 900,000 in '68 then a steady decline ever since with the exception of this year where we're going back up to 317,000.

 

Well I got some more photos taken tonight. I think they came out alright, except for a couple that won't get posted.

ME90a, Loring AFB, aluminum, 28mm, Cunningham describes this token as having a period between the 1 and 0 and this one does not.


ME120b, Loring AFB, aluminum, 28mm

ME120c, Loring AFB, aluminum, 35mm


ME120d, Loring AFB, aluminum, 22mm


ME120e, Loring AFB, aluminum, 28mm


ME120f, Loring AFB, aluminum, 35mm


ME130a, Loring AFB, aluminum, 35mm


ME130c, Loring AFB, aluminum, 35mm

Loring was a very prolific issuer and there's a two more I didn't post because the images came out bad.


MI310f, Wurtsmith AFB, aluminum, 26mm

 

Offutt was another prolific issuer of tokens. Most of the ones I have are imaged below, but there was another that didn't make it. Both of these bases I got in separate group lots for not very much and I felt like it was a good score.

NE270b, Offutt AFB, brass, 28mm, 1000 were ordered in February 1972


NE270d, Offutt AFB, brass, 39mm, large letter variety


NE270g, brass, 34mm, small letter variety. Dang hole!


NE270i, brass, 21mm, 500 were ordered in March 1970


NE270j, brass, 25mm, 4,000 were ordered in March 1970

NE270m, brass, 31mm, 300 were ordered in July 1970


NE280c, aluminum, 28mm, pictures don't show it very well but it's bent slightly.