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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;johnmilton, post: 24655034, member: 101855&quot;]The United States Sanitary Commission was an organization to raise funds to supply soldiers with medical and cleaning supplies. The way diseases were spread was not well understood at the this time. A soldier stood as much chance of dying in camp from a disease than he did from&nbsp; hostile fire on the battlefield.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the fund raising devices for the Sanitary Commission was to hold fairs were people contributed money a paid for goods and souvenirs. Several of fairs had tokens made which were sold to the public. Here are some examples.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Philadelphia Sanitary Fair was held in June 1864. The Philadelphia Mint hauled in a coin press to the floor of the exhibition and made tokens that were sold to raise funds. The mint charged 10 cents for the bronze pieces and 50 cents for the silver examples.</p><p><br /></p><p>Bronze</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570916[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Silver. This is the most common Civil War Token in silver. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570917[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Gilt - These are fairly rare and were probably made for VIPs.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570918[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is half of a stereo viewer card of press on the floor of the exhibit hall.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570920[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The New York City Sanitary Fair was just a large as the Philadelphia event. One would think that the token would be common, but it isn&#039;t. It&#039;s quite scarce because there was a mix up in the dates. The token says the event was held in May. It was actually held in April.</p><p><br /></p><p>Most of these tokens come on Mint State. This one is worn, and might be the poorest example known. But I got it for half price. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie2" alt=";)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> I probably should have bought one of the Uncs. that was floating around at the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570921[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The Nantucket Sanitary Fair token was made by the Philadelphia firm of Key and Co. It was probably made at about the same time as the New York token.</p><p><br /></p><p>Nantucket, Massachusetts might seem like an out of the way place to hold a fair, but there was plenty of money on the island. Whaling was a high risk, high reward industry.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570922[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>There are now other tokens listed or allied with this movement, but this is the last of the &quot;classics&quot; that were listed in the Fuld book. The Wapakoneta, Ohio token is listed as rare, but a hoard of silver or tin plated examples cropped up at the time I bought this one, over twenty years ago.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1570923[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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