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Message:: [QUOTE="cwtokenman, post: 47034, member: 2100"]I collect U.S. and English gaming counters, and the OP's item does not appear all that similar to what I have or have seen. Neither is it shown in any of my 3 gaming counter references, although they cover only a small portion of all gaming counters, so by no means am I indicating it is not a counter, just that I could not find it in a reference, nor am I familiar with this particular piece. There is no all inclusive reference book covering all counters. While most do not have denominations on them, it is not all that uncommon to see one with a denomination. Many of the gaming counter designs are quite attractive, and many resemble circulating gold pieces of the day. As far as what a gaming counter is, I will copy a portion of "A Brief History of the Counter" from the TAMS Journal, Volume 12, Number 6, Part II from December, 1972.   Originally counters were, as their name implies, small metallic discs used to "count" beyond the limit of one's fingers and toes. The use of reckoning counters was a fairly well established practice in the Roman world, each Roman counting house being supplied with a tesserae.   Here we have the first recorded instance in Europe of the widespread use of counters. The word tessera was also applied to the admission tokens to the Roman Games.   Over the centuries the counters (also known by many other names, including jetons, rechenpfennigen, "black money", dantes, etc.) gradually assumed use in accounting only in games, especially the card games of whist and poker, and thus gradually merged into the poker chips of today.   Most counters were produced in private mints in Tournai, Antwerp and Paris in the 15th and 16th centuries, but the scene of their greatest predominance was at Nuremberg in Bavaria in the 16th through 19th centuries.   Several renowned families of Nuremberg rechenpfennig makers dominated the production of the spiel marken over the almost 400 years of the city's preeminence as the center of counter production. Beginning with the Schultes and the Krauwinckels in the 16th century and the Lauffers in the 17th, Reich and Dorn in the 18th, the striking finally devolved upon the Lauers in the 19th. This last family is of special significance to us since most German types produced for America and England came from the workshops of the Lauers.   Founder of the firm was Ernst Ludwig Sigmund Lauer (1762-1833). Joseph Moore of Birmingham, England also became active in counter making in the 1840's and later, under the firm name Allen & Moore, produced a great many English and American counters. Kettle produced counters for both as well.   Before Birmingham could seriously challenge Nuremberg as the world center of counter-making, the industrial revolution changed the entire picture. Game counters fell victim to mass produced celluloid, vulcanite and finally plastic poker chips and by the turn of the century in 1900 had almost disappeared from the scene. However, there was some survival until World War I, as shown by a number of dated specimens coming from German mints after 1900.   That game counters were occasionally used as emergency specie is easily shown, but their primary purpose remained as always as aids to accounting.   A modern successor to the game counter is the metallic play money used in children's games. Thus the counter has come full tilt. Used in reckoning by the Romans with their cumbersome system of numerals and then later by the ignorant masses of Western Europe using the better Arabic numerals, they gradually found use in the card-game accounting of the educated and finally find their resting place again in the only really uneducated stratum of Western society, the children.[/QUOTE]

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