Let's see your exonumia!

"Souvenir of an Invasion": WW1 German trench art on 1904 Belgian 10-centime coin)

Larger obverse picture
Larger reverse picture

Host coin: 1904 Belgium 10-centimes, KM53.
Obverse: host coin details unaltered, red (glass?) "jewel" mounted in original center hole. Bail ring mounted at top.
Reverse: host design planed off, re-engraved in German: "Feldzug in Belgien[Campaign in Belgium] 1914-1915", iron cross at left.

Ex- "acsb-rich", eBay, 03/17/2017.

I've had some interesting pieces of World War I "trench art" coins come and go in recent years, but this is the first piece with German engraving I've had, and also the first "love token" piece I've had with a mounted stone in it. (I've always kind of liked those, but one has eluded me until now). It was rather stiffly priced and the seller drove a hard bargain, but after some deliberation I decided to go for it.

This coin was probably made into a souvenir for a German soldier to send home to his mother or sweetheart. Though there is no name nor initials to associate it with an individual soldier, it does describe itself as a relic of the German campaign in Belgium ("Feldzug in Belgien") in 1914 and 1915.

The 1914 German invasion of Belgium was a brutal affair and there were a number ofatrocities, though these were somewhat exaggerated by British and French propaganda. Many civilians were killed and cultural sites destroyed.

Eventually the German advance was checked by Allied forces and the war along the Western Front devolved into the muddy stalemate in the trenches we so often see depicted in films today.

Of course the Germans learned their lesson and never invaded Belgium again.

Haha. If only that were true! The Nazi blitzkrieg swept through again in 1940.

 

A few cherrypicking selections from The Great Exonumia Bulk Bag (Part 1)

In the summer of 2014, I bought a 12-pound sack of various exonumia items from @Aethelred. Took my time plucking through it. It was one of those oddball "gee, I don't need this stuff but I don't see how I can lose on it" kind of deals, and I was glad I bought it. Averaged out, this stuff ended up costing less than 10 cents per piece in bulk, so the older material (and there was LOTS of older material!) was lots of fun, and modestly profitable, too. I guess this had been several years' accumulation of odd exonumia that walked into the brick-and-mortar shop where @Aethelred works. I was happy to play with it.

Again, there was about twelve pounds in this lot, so these pictures are only the tiniest sampling of what was in there.

We'll start with a USS Olympia propeller medal. Half-dollar-ish sized. There were two of these in that bag. The striking was done much later than the Spanish-American War (ca. 1950s-'60s, I believe), but with metal from the original propeller(s) of the famous warship, which still exists as a National Historic Landmark.




You've probably heard of this guy, right? Good Luck tokens were all the rage in the interwar period. Small wonder Lucky Lindy got featured on some of them. This was also half-dollar-ish size. The tiny lettering on the reverse was a Whitehead & Hoag mark, as I recall.




Here is William Taft Evans' US Navy Reserve dogtag from WW2, with the chain still attached. I never got around to looking up his service record or genealogy.




So, yeah, there was oddball stuff like that in the bag, too, including inexpensive but interesting old "coin jewelry" items. Like this Mercury dime ring. Cheapo-cool! Cost me less than the face value of the dime! I mean, who cares that it's not a real gold ring, right? Flipped it on eBay. It went for something like 12-15 bucks, as I recall, but hey, that was pure profit. What a fun, fun bag of stuff.


1926 Lincoln cent in Rundback's Jewelers (NYC) horseshoe-shaped encasement.

OK, so people who collect these like 'em in better condition than this, but... for less than a dime? Pssh! Looked like a sweet cherrypick to me!




WW2 OPA (Office of Price Administration) food rationing points (red & blue fiber tokens).

These turn up frequently in token lots. You might have seen 'em. Interestingly, they have little two-letter codes on them. I never quite figured out what those meant, but I think some people collect these by those little code letters. I think I heard somewhere that the blue ones (are a bit scarcer? were worth more at the time? dunno)




Assorted Depression-era sales tax tokens. Aluminum, plastic, fiber, and outright cardboard.




Mardi Gras doubloons and wooden nickels, circa 1960s-'70s.

A friend just returned from Mardi Gras 2017 and brought me back two tokens. They're thicker and better quality than these older ones, but still lightweight and probably aluminum. My friend (a female coworker) was quick to explain that she did not flash her *ahem!* chesty appendages at the parade floats to get them. (I hear that's a thing. Never been to Mardi Gras. Not a fan of bacchanalian behaviour. ) First two people who PM me can have one of the 2017 tokens. They're gold colored. The ones shown here sold on eBay, of course.







Another ca. 1930s Good Luck token. Note the use of swastikas on both sides. This was struck, just before WW2, before the Nazis spoiled the swastika forever. Prior to them, it had been a good luck symbol, as you see it in this context. The swastika in the crystal ball on this piece runs counterclockwise, like the ancient Zoroastrian symbol. The one on the reverse runs clockwise, like the one the Nazis ripped off. Note the other lucky symbols.

Neat piece. I found one of these while detecting, too. It was in an old park, only about an inch deep in an area that had yielded a lot of Indian cents, V-nickels, and a Barber dime or two, and the signal about blasted my ears off. In sandy soil, it was gorgeously preserved for a dug find, but is much darker brown than this one. This one could've used a little Vaseline rub and I think the 1:00 obverse scuz would've come off OK. My dug one is actually in equal or better condition than this one.



Speaking of swastikas...

Hm. I wonder who this guy is.

Eh, probably some obscure German or Austrian dude nobody ever heard of.




This next one was a headscratcher for me until I did a little Googling.

It is a 1916 medal featuring WW1 French general Joseph Gallieni.

It was created by sculptor Auguste Maillard.

Fun find, IMHO.




Speaking of World War One and militaristic stuff, here are two from the opposite side: a pretty decent pair of German iron kriegsgeld 10-pfennig tokens.

I had one of those "Vaterland" ones before, with the muscular munitions lady slinging around huge artillery shells. Cool stuff. Iron does tend to rust, though. These are actually in pretty decent shape for 100-year-old iron tokens.



More German notgeld-y stuff, from roughly the same era.

Whoops! There's a French spy in the mix. (The big aluminum one.)






Old tool checks, I suppose. Look to be 19th century. The round one could have been overstruck on a copper coin, but if so, not a trace of the undertype remains.



This little US Mint Lincoln/Grant medalet was neat. Nice quality and high relief, too. Rather thick, but not a large-diameter piece.



Promotional token for the 1938 Warner Brothers movie musical Gold Diggers In Paris.

Must've been a pretty racy number by the standards of the day. <*wolf whistle*>

Note that we're still in the 1930s "lucky" token phase. This one was smaller than most, being more "quarter-ish" than "half-dollar-ish". Brass, I think, but toned reddish-brown. Would've no doubt had a golden color when new.






Green River Whiskey, circa 1935. Another half-dollar-sized lucky token.

"The Whiskey Without Regrets".

Ha! I rather doubt that.

Then again, the whiskey was an inanimate liquid. It couldn't have any regrets.

The people who drank the whiskey, on the other hand... they or their immediate family might've had a regret or two.

I dug one of these tokens while detecting, once. No regrets about that- it was a fun find. Not as nice as this one, of course.




I think I'm about to hit the max image-per-post ceiling on this post, so we'll continue the selections from the Great Exonumia Bag in another post...

(Continued below...)

 

A few cherrypicking selections from The Great Exonumia Bulk Bag (Part 2)

Let's step back into the 1800s with some really nasty Hard Times tokens and Civil War tokens.

OK, yeah... rough. But old. And historical. There was even an 1812 British token and a 1790s "Conder" token in the bag. Also well-worn and/or beat up. But ... again... for less than a dime apiece? Pssh! I'm all over that!





Speaking of the Civil War, this one is a military ID badge. A "dog tag", in other words. You could order 'em from a mailorder catalog in the mid- to late-1800s, and have your name and information engraved on those little "waves" in front of the shield.

Obviously this one is still blank, and it never got engraved. Interesting that it still seems to have gotten a little bit of wear, though. I recall seeing these somewhere before, but now I can't seem to Google up the right kind.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's 19th century, though whether it's from the Civil War or Spanish-American War or even as late as WW1; I don't know. I think WW1 is a bit late. The Civil War is a bit early, though I do think some of these got engraved and carried by your more affluent Federal soldiers during that period. I'd wager a Seated dime love token that these were almost certainly "a thing" during the Indian War and Spanish-American War eras, circa 1870s to 1890s. Maybe the Phillipine Insurrection at the turn of the century, too, though probably no later than 1902-ish.



This next one was my favorite cherrypick from the bag, because of the interesting correspondence that resulted when I sold it.

It was a Morro Castle encased cent, with the host coin dated from the year of the disaster. The reverse is a copper "shell" that fit over the coin. I've never seen another one like it. (As the subsequent story developed, apparently neither had the expert on this stuff.)

I sold this on eBay and the buyer was Deborah Whitcraft, president of the New Jersey Maritime Museum. When I found that out, I refunded half her money and we struck up a friendly correspondence via eBay messages. She is the person who literally wrote the book on the subject and is curator of the largest museum exhibit (which she sent me a signed copy of. How cool is that?)



There was also a neat ca. 1890-1920 Swedish steamboat token, too.



Gaaah... just got busy at work. I'll have to resume this in a few days.

(To be continued...)