Hi all I'm currently reading "The Numismatic Aspects of Leprosy" (yes, there is such a thing) by McFadden/Grost/Marr. It's an interesting book, listing more than 1000 different tokens and bank notes used in leper colonies in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Danish West Indies, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nigeria, Panama, Philippines, Thailand and Venezuela. With the exception of tokens from Colombia, The Philippines and Venezuela, these tokens are very rare, and there are few collectors. The background for issuing them were threefold: To prevent spreading the disease through coinage (which was unrealistic), preventing the patients at the colonies from getting legal tender with which they could escape the colony, and preventing black market transactions with outside merchants. I only have one Colombia 50 centavo and a Venezuela fractional Bolivar. I would love to see more of these tokens, if any of you have some in your collection. The book sites a poem by Gilbert S. Perez published in "The Numismatist" September 1946. So will I. Leper Tokens I left the old home Filled with the burning ambition To get somewhere To be something I haunted the columned halls of the University And hung the framed degrees, Parchment after parchment On the walls of my room But where did I go? To a little seagirt isle Where they pumped Ounces upon ounces Of choolmugra oil Into my veins What was I? Jingling in my pockets The dull nickel coins The precious tokens Of the unclean I shuffle along The rock strewn beach Something horrible Something to be shunned And with the sickening Loneliness in my heart I fling A full handful Of the gray discs Far out into The rippling waves A thank offering A sacrifice To Kwan Yin The all-merciful
Colombia Lazareto 2 Centavos, 1921 Colombia Lazareto 50 Centavos, 1921 Colombia Lazareto 50 Centavos 1928
I don't have a photo with me but i have several Culion coins in my collection mainly because they were minted by the US Mint for a US Territory. I used to think that there weren't many people collecting the type, but the auctions for them prove otherwise. They can be a tough win.
So here we have coins from the leper colonies in Colombia, Philippines and Venezuela. The most common ones, although they are scarce too. I found a good site for the Panama leper colony coins, stating 10 to 24 known examples of each denomination: http://www.coins-of-panama.com/paloseco.html Based on McFadden et al., I'll site the mintage of the coins posted on this thread to the extent that they have researched: Philippines: 1 peso 1925: 20 000 20 centavos 1922: 10 155 Colombia: 50 centavos 1901: 25 560 50 centavos 1921: 120 000 50 centavos 1928: 50 000 2 centavos 1921: 350 000 Venezuela: Mintage stated as N/A by McFadden/Grost/Marr. The rest of these tokens are extremely rare, it seems. Brazil, Japan and China seems to be the "easiest" ones. I think we can forget about Nigeria and the Danish West Indies.
Japan is absurdly hard if not rare. They rarely appear in the market for starters. Never heard of Chinese ones.
I meant to say «easiest among the rest», but they are all hard to get. China has used plastic tokens in colonies/hospitals up to our time. Unsurprisingly, this is not talked about a lot from the Chinese side.