Team, Here are a couple of encased coins. One is a Swiss 1 Rappen from 1944 in a Good Luck Token, the hole in it is normal. The other is a 1963 Canadian Cent in a Windsor Canadian Whiskey advertisement. Pretty neat and worth about $5 or a little more each. Take Care Bone
I bought a 1901 Pan-Am Expo Buffalo souvenir coin (lucky penny) with a 1901 indian cent in MS brown condition. They are cool...It combines a moment in time with an event, which is one of the reasons why I collect coins.
Sounds like a nice encased, Midas. Any pics? Encased coins first appeared in 1901, containing 1901 Indian Head cents. Issuers believed people would be less likely to toss their advertising away if there was a coin in it. Good luck slogans were added in hopes that the piece would be referred to more often, making it a more effective form of advertising. While typically the coin used would be the year of issue, the prior year was also often used if the current year's coins were not readily available. A small percentage of encased coins used non-comtemporaneous coins, such as large cents or silver dollars to represent something special, such as the founding year of the business. But there are considerable examples as well where the original coin has been replaced with a lesser coin, due to the original's high grade or rare date. There are telltale features if this has been done if anyone is interested.
I see many varieties of these in antique shops, but I've never purchased one and wasn't really aware that they were considered "collectibles" of any significance. I may have to reconsider. The antique shops seem to put them together with world's fair tokens, civil war tokens, and other types of exonuminia.
Definitely collectible. There is an Encased Coin Society (may not be the exact name, but I have a link somewhere). In general, the older the better, and merchants (identifiable with town) are better than events or mavericks. The coin can be a large factor as well. I have seen some go for in the $100 neighborhood. If priced right, there could be some bargains in those antique shops!
