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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lehmansterms, post: 2702782, member: 80804&quot;]Think of it as a &quot;proto-poker chip&quot; and you&#039;ll be in the right vicinity as to its origins and use. When paper became common and cheap enough for folks to use for &quot;scratch&quot; calculations and figuring, the venerable jeton, a coin-like token made to be used on a checkerboard-like surface and slid around like a bead on an abacus, with a history going back to at least 12th century France, was no longer of any practical use.&nbsp; However, almost anyone who did any sort of figuring probably had a set (or several sets) of jetons. They were seized-upon as a ready-made chit or place-keeper and so were perfect for use in gambling wherever we might use chips today. </p><p>The manufacturers of jetons, of course, with their centuries long history of creating and supplying coin-like pieces, promoted their use as game counters - and as political &quot;statements&quot;. The late 18th, early 19th century era was a time when purely gaming tokens split off from &quot;message&quot; tokens which had formerly similarly served as game markers.</p><p>These are immensely rich fields within exonumia and allow one to trace how jetons lead directly to the creation of decorative poker chips for home use, elaborate semi-monetary casino chips, political statement tokens and buttons, and tokens as a purely advertising-related medium.</p><p>An example of a late medieval or early modern jeton of the sort often found in MD digs and which will usually stump the unfamiliar who believe them to be coins:<img src="http://www.stoa.org/albums/album136/French_Jeton.sized.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p>The French aristocracy (of course) went hog-wild for collecting decorative jetons and the manufacturers were glad to provide them in a variety of metals - rather like collector plates.</p><p><img src="http://www.stoa.org/albums/album136/12_Louis_XIV_Sun_in_Zodiac.sized.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p>The website on which I have prepared photos of the transitional tokens including the very common &quot;spade guinea&quot; jetons like the one which began the thread, and political items like the &quot;To Hanover&quot; pieces poking fun at the new German monarch in 1837, Victoria, is down at the moment, unfortunately. </p><p>If the thread goes on, I may try re-shooting some examples.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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