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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 1850274, member: 57463&quot;](Sorry to have been away. I started a new job and we are moving. Things are stacking up here a bit.)</p><p><br /></p><p>brg5658&#039;s tokens are stunning.&nbsp; I note the rarer &quot;Shoot him on the spot&quot; non-error variety.</p><p><br /></p><p>By hoarded, I meant that people did not spend them but kept them, accumulated them, melted them, and sold the metal.&nbsp; That did not happen. They circulated. Why, if people were &quot;hoarding metal money&quot;? We read ourselves too easily into history.</p><p><br /></p><p>They were never legal. They still circulated. The US government attempted to make tokens unlawful several times. It never held. People do what they do. CWTs could have long after the war, as did fractional currency notes. They did not. They were a fad of the Civil War. Once the war was over, they lost their purpose.</p><p><br /></p><p>As I said above, that is why we identify them by standard die numbers: merchants ordered them from producers. But as you say, dozens of firms were in the business of making tokens. Why did not dozens of firms make non-standard silver tokens? I have silver bank tokens from the UK: lower fineness and weight, good-for &quot;real&quot; money, but in silver none the less. It would seem that if people were &quot;hoarding hard money&quot; and if cent tokens were abundant, someone would have filled the voids at the higher levels of commerce.&nbsp; That did not happen. It suggests that CWTs were an advertising medium first and as such paid their way into commerce.</p><p><br /></p><p>One test of my theory would be the non-existence of huge lots bagged by the thousands from street car companies, ferries, newspapers, and other users of minor coinage. In fact, while CWT vectures are known, they are not a major category. Rather than a thousand dry goods stores, we would know hundreds of local competing newspapers who were actual consumers of minor coinage and who also understood advertising.</p><p><br /></p><p>Imagine the profits on 10-cent tokens or 25-cent tokens. (In the 1790s British merchants promised to make good on 240 pence for a pound payable in London, Liverpool, or Birmingham (depending).) No one did. The faux cents were fine. They were a common fad.</p><p><br /></p><p>CWTs suggest a lot of questions about the sociology of money: what money is; what people recognize as money; the purposes it serves aside from tallying for commerce. Everyone likes a pretty coin, but if you could not read the legends and did not understand the devices, the object would be meaningless.&nbsp; CWTs carry a lot of meaning.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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