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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cwtokenman, post: 912054, member: 2100&quot;]Thanks for the compliment Green. Its good to be seen. I don&#039;t know about being a master, but I am certainly an avid collector. I recently picked up my saloon token reference, and this is the first that I have used it. I was a little disappointed in that there were not individual listings for the tokens. The author seems to provide much detail on a few select tokens, but provides little specific info on the rest. The most info that I can relate to the OP&#039;s token is that Grass Valley is listed under mining towns, and there are 12 known saloon tokens, but it does not say if they are all from the Capital Saloon. To provide a point of reference, there are 110 mining towns listed with known saloon tokens, with known token populations between 1 (43 of the towns) and 74 (Sacramento). The 74 pop. was much higher than the others, with 25 known (Jackson) being the second highest pop. For all types of California towns, San Francisco has the highest known population of saloon tokens with 168.</p><p><br /></p><p>A fair amount of general saloon history was also provided, and I was a bit surprised to learn how high the ratio of saloons to other businesses was. In 1876, in the state of Nevada, fully 15% of all businesses were saloons. 70% of all American saloon tokens recorded are from 10 western states. Most saloon tokens are post 1900.</p><p><br /></p><p>Among the pages of history (from &quot;Collecting Guide to the Pioneer Minor Coinage of American Saloons, by Fred N. Holabird) was a bit more info regarding the OP&#039;s token. Many of the pre-1900 saloons advertised their saloons through the use of billiard manufacturers, who provided tokens with the merchants names on the obverse and the billiard manufacturer on the reverse, usually with a depiction of a pool table. Most of the pool and billiard tables were manufactured in Chicago. Die sinkers there made tokens for many of the table manufacturers, and some of these were thought to have had an office in San Francisco to help facilitate the western saloon and pool table/billiard business. The most prolific of these table manufacturers who helped in the issuance of tokens was J.M. Brunswick, Balke (&amp; Collender) who were makers of the famous Monarch billiard table. Others include Jacob Strahle, Charles Pick of Chicago, and August Jungblot. Since many tokens are not dated, the following is a rough guide to dating the pictorial saloon tokens:</p><p><br /></p><p>Brunswick &amp; Co.&nbsp; &nbsp; circa 1880</p><p>Brunswick, Balke &amp; Co.&nbsp; &nbsp; circa 1880-1884</p><p>Brunswick, Balke, Collender&nbsp; &nbsp; circa 1884-1910</p><p>Jacob Strahle&nbsp; &nbsp; circa 1883-1891</p><p>August Jungblut&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; circa 1875-1891</p><p>Chas. Pick&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; circa 1875-1890</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>My 1976 &quot;California Tokens&quot; by Charles V. Kappen lists your token as Grass Valley (Nevada Co.) id number 5, and assigned a value at $30.00 (the highest value for any of the listed 67 Grass Valley tokens), which I feel substantiates my opinion that its current value would be in excess of $50 today.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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