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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cladking, post: 1333547, member: 68&quot;]All fine questions but I believe they are unanswerable.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>This particular token is quite common but there are numerous varierties and this could be one of the tougher ones.&nbsp; These tended to be made in batches of 1000 and most were&nbsp; used in Chicago.&nbsp; Since dies were destroyed after a batch was made any reorders would use slightly different&nbsp; dies.&nbsp;&nbsp; Large percentages of these were rounded up in the scrap drives of WW II and destroyed.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Most were used in hotels and had distinctive cut-outs and gouges to prevent cheap holed tokens with lead pounded in touse for nickels.&nbsp; These are what gave rise to the term &quot;plugged nickel&quot;.&nbsp; They would make a token that had a similar sound to a nickel striking the bell and the hotel would be out money.&nbsp; The shapes got very complicated.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve got all the catalogs and a host of articals about telephone tokens but can&#039;t remember ever seeing an explanation for most of the symbols.&nbsp; &quot;10&quot; is by far the most common number to appear on them.&nbsp; I suspect the letter was used to differentiate very similar tokens of different establishments since there are only some 40 different configurations.&nbsp; I doubt the arrows on this have any meaning other than perhaps point the way the coin fits in the slot.&nbsp; There is a lot of variation in arrow design between varieties.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Telephone collecting is becoming so common that these tokens are usually worth about $1.50 even for the common ones.&nbsp; There just aren&#039;t all that many of these that survive and telephone card and many others seek these for their collections.&nbsp; These are a lot of fun to collect but most people don&#039;t see enough of them to collect them seriously.&nbsp; There are some 650 different just of the Illinois tokens not counting another 400 or so varieties.&nbsp; Some are quite scarce and have more extensive demand.&nbsp; For instance there was one of these issued for the 1933 world&#039;s fair that is scarce and in high demand.&nbsp; The most common issues such as the one pictured here had mintages in the 10,000 range and 90% are gone.&nbsp; Some issues suffered much higher attrition because they were in use for a protracted time or were destroyed in the scrap drives or both.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>They&#039;re a wonderful collectible but will never be very popular due to their scarcity and that now they are becoming so widely dispersed.&nbsp; Only 40 years ago it wasn&#039;t uncommon to see these in garage sales and flea markets in the Chicago region but they are becoming rarely seen now days.&nbsp; I collected them for years before I even knew what they were![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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