Featured Wooden Nickels

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Shame about that hole.

 

Does anyone remember the old admonition? "Don't take any wooden nickels!"

 

Yes, in American culture it is mean to be cautious in your dealings.

 

A number of years ago at a smaller local coin show I ran across a booklet that two Michigan collectors had published that cataloged the Michigan Official Wooden Money from 1934 to 1965, that had been issued by communities to help finance their centennial and other celebrations. My interest was drawn by one of the authors being my wife's uncle. Since then I have attempted to collect the 198 varieties issued by the 67 communities listed in that book.

Somewhere the idea took root to update that booklet, so far I have identified 273 varieties from 116 communities in Michigan ranging from 1934 to 1986. A draft of a Second Edition of my uncles book was completed earlier this week. (nothing better to do lately)

I'll attach some pics here: The 1966 First Edition of Michigan Official Wooden Money, and the first Wooden Nickel from Fenton Michigan. The history of Wooden Money noted in a earlier post that Tenino, Washington used wood to create local script in response to bank failures. Fenton, used that idea to create a souvenirs and to help finance that communities Centennial.

 

Excellent work!

 

Here is an image of a page from my Second Edition...

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I imagine there would have to be duplicates in a collection of that size, but if one were to include all types of wooden nickels ever issued in the USA, I would believe there are multi-millions of different wooden nickels. To use my home state of Ohio as an approximation example, 1,000,000 divided by 50 (states) divided by 88 (counties) = approx. 227 issues per county to have 1,000,000 different wooden nickels.

Over the years, the POWMC has probably issued several hundred woods itself between its "Lighthouses of the Great Lakes" series and wooden money show woods, not to mention the multitudes of other local issuers there has been in the county.

I checked Luedtke's book "Guide Book of Wooden Money", 9th edition to see if he mentioned how many varieties there might be. I did not find a number for that, but he did mention that Sambo's restaurants have issued over 2,500 different woods, and that about 5,000,000 wooden nickels are made each year.

 

[/QUOTE]Somewhere the idea took root to update that booklet, so far I have identified 273 varieties from 116 communities in Michigan ranging from 1934 to 1986. A draft of a Second Edition of my uncles book was completed earlier this week. (nothing better to do lately)
[/QUOTE]

Penny Guy, I made a quick count in Luedtke's 2010 book (mentioned in prior post), and he lists 796 official & semi-official varieties for Michigan. I didn't count the types separately, but I would guess maybe 2/3 of them were officials.

 

These wooden nickle style throws are a first for me

 

It's really amazing what's out there in Wooden Nickels.

 

Somewhere the idea took root to update that booklet, so far I have identified 273 varieties from 116 communities in Michigan ranging from 1934 to 1986. A draft of a Second Edition of my uncles book was completed earlier this week. (nothing better to do lately)
[/QUOTE]

Penny Guy, I made a quick count in Luedtke's 2010 book (mentioned in prior post), and he lists 796 official & semi-official varieties for Michigan. I didn't count the types separately, but I would guess maybe 2/3 of them were officials.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the info. My focus thus far has been on “officials” only. I’ve been collecting info on what has been available for sale on the collector market for about five years. If your guess of 2/3’s of the Luedtke’s number is correct that would translate into about 525 “officials” having been released. Seems high to me at first thought. I haven’t seen any Official celebration pieces dated after 1986, but there must be something out there.

 

They should throw these from the floats instead of beads. Lol

 

Well they do or so I have been told instead of the beads The beads cost more. I guess that is why they are called throws the aluminum and plastic and wood. the cupro nickle and silver are handed out.

 

That sounds like a plan.

 

I had a summer job in Washington DC in 1970 and attended this coin show one day.


Washington D.C. Coin Show 1970 Wooden Nickel

Obverse:
Dwight Eisenhower facing left
SOUVENIR / Eisenhower dollar

Reverse:
SIXTH ANNUAL M.W.N.A. CONVENTION (Metropolitan Washington Numismatic Association)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SHERATON PARK HOTEL
JULY 24-26, 1970

Wood, 51 mm, 5.67 gm

 

That's a nice nice souvenir.