Bought my first "patriotic" civil war token at a show last month. Intrested in buying more and maybe other intresting tokens produced in the united states. My question is, What is the best book to buy with info and values? Not collecting by variety just by type.
Here's a link with a list of various token books. The guy that has the site says he owns all the books listed and tells you his opinion of each and where to get them plus cost http://users.pullman.com/fjstevens/tokens/reviewlist.html
Fuld's book looks like the one for civil war tokens, but I was wanting to cover the entire field of US tokens. I think I found it, The Standard Cataloge of United States Tokens 1700-1900. I think this should cover any US tokens I come across. Thanks everyone! Chuck
Hello Chuck, Congratulations and welcome upon entering the interesting world of exonumia! I do not think you will find any lack of interesting tokens, no matter what your fancy. If you wish to buy just one general token book, Rulau's Standard Catalog is about as good as you will get. However, even with its 1200 large pages, it covers but a very small portion of the U.S. tokens out there. Even some types that it does cover (such as Civil War tokens) are not covered well. Rulau devoted 140 pages to Civil War tokens in his book, and he only lists the most common one for each die or merchant as he did not want the cwt section to dominate his book. One merchant may have produced over two hundred varieties, but Rulau will only list the most common ONE. You can see why it may be a nearly impossible to determine the correct cwt id using his book. I do love ebay sellers who use it though, as I have picked up many a rare cwt that the seller incorrectly id'd and listed as a common. Also Rulau lists in the front many types of token that he does not attempt to cover, and there are many others that are not covered nor in the list, although most of those are somewhat obscure. The three books USS656 posted in post 7 are necessities for serious cwt collecting. Miscellaneous early token collecting needs would be best met by the Rulau catalog. Most anything more specialized will require more specialized references. I have over 200 exonumia specific reference books, and my library is far from complete. Let me know what types of tokens you may be interested in, and I will try to help you determine the best book(s) to acquire.
To provide an idea as to how much information there may be available for a given topic, here are just two examples of how many pages are in a couple of my larger specific topic references. Pennsylvania Merchant tokens - 1253 pages - 8.5 x 11 Atwood Coffee Cataloge of Transportation tokens - (3 volume set) Vol. 1 - The listing - 845 pages 6x9 (no pictures) Vol. 2 - History & Encyclopedia - 774 pages 6x9 (some pictures) Vol. 3 - Minor Die Varieties - 946 pages 6x9 (lots of pictures) That is 2565 total pages for transit tokens. Just trying to give you a feel for the vastness of token types and varieties. One book can not possibly cover all tokens. Few books provide (current) values for tokens. Rulau's and Kanzinger's are about as current as any. Even searching for completed auctions on ebay can be difficult as the vast majority of tokens are so seldom offered. I have one reference that refers to populations (of that type of token) as small as 6 known to be considered "common", so you can imagine there could still be difficulty in locating one.
Thanks for the info CW, That's what I like about this forum, The people are great! I collect mainly seated coinage and some lincoln RPM & Varieties or on some months whatever looks intresting to me. I'm wanting to expand with my limited budget to aquire a few CW tokens, Patriotic & storecard, other intresting tokens or medals and some world coins. Yes, I have quite a few books to buy. This will take some time getting the books I need as some are quite expensive as you well may know. I just aquired my seated dime variety book I have needed for some time and next to buy is the standard token book. I'm just testing the waters with CW Tokens to see if it's something I'm gonna stick with. If so, I will get the Die Variety books to do some cherrypicking of my own. It's tough for me. If I see a coin that sparks an intrest in me. I want to dive right in and learn everything at once. Then six months later I'm collecting another type of coin. Another six months passes and I'm back picking up where I left off. At least I'm gathering imformation as I go. "Jack of all, Master of none" in my case. Many Thanks! Chuck
I've been waiting, because for the past three years Whitman has said they were publishing a guide book to US tokens. But, so far, nothing. In fact, their website doesn't even mention the effort anymore. I've been looking for one on Civil War tokens myself. If anyone finds a good one, post a review, and I'll do so if I come accross one. Guy~
The rarest and most expensive would be different tokens, as would be my favorite. Rarity is relative to the size of the collector base. With some tokens I collect, a known population of 6 or more is considered common. Many tokens do not have known mintages, so known populations inherently have a bit of guesswork. Many types of tokens, such as a number of state groupings of merchant tokens, do not even have a reference for the topic. Price guides for exonumia are few and far between, so one just needs to get a feel for that niche of the market. So, it is somewhat difficult to answer your question in a general context, but cwts are fairly well researched and documented, so I will answer within that framework. For rarest, I suppose some of the 2 dozen or so unlisted varieties I have are good candidates, as they have the potential for being unique, although I would be surprised if any would actually be so. As far as cwts with rarity ratings based on known populations, I do not have any R-10 rated (unique) tokens, but I do have 32 R-9 (2-4 known) rated tokens (3 patriotics & 29 store cards). One popular way to collect cwts is by the 400 issueing towns. The toughest of my R-9s is from a town that only has two varieties, each rated R-9. I don't think it wise to advertise values on the internet, but if you really wish to know you can PM me. Scarce tokens are worth just a small fraction of comparable rarity regular coinage though. Less desirable merchant R-9 cwts can list for as low as around $50 in uncirculated. My favorite token is not a cwt, but certainly is a related item. It is a political campaign token from the 1860 Lincoln-Hamlin campaign.
I am only quoting because my town only has 1 "known" CWT...Fuld 360A-1do/R 6.I saw another once but have NOT seen one in over 10yrs.
