Introduction

The present volume presents the papers given at the tenth in our series of Coinage of the Americas Conferences. This meeting represented a milestone, for two reasons. First, the very fact that it was the tenth in an ongoing series, one conceived and announced by Harry W. Bass, Jr. as part of the Society's 125th anniversary celebration in 1983, shepherded into existence one year later, and continued annually, chaired by no fewer than five - the present writer, Alan M. Stahl, William L. Bischoff, William E. Metcalf and John M. Kleeberg, in that order - represents, I think, a development in modern American numismatics which has no parallel anywhere else. The COAC meeting has, in fact, become a welcome, valuable, and eagerly anticipated event in the American numismatic calendar. This tenth member of the series suggests that the entire program is alive and well, a continuing force for the study and dissemination of new information about America's money.

But this particular gathering was a milestone for another reason. With the exception of the 1988 COAC, which was devoted to the coinage of the Spanish Viceroyalty of El Peru and its successor states, this meeting represented the most ambitious conference to date, in terms of the size of the research topic. Beginning with the 1730s, our speakers moved all the way down to the end of the nineteenth century, as they addressed the longest chapter in the entire story of our numismatics: the unofficial, private response to a shortage of official, public coinage or currency. We call this response the token.

Born of necessity, the token was with us virtually from the beginning of European settlement. And it still lingers: at the time I joined the American Numismatic Society as a Curator in 1974, subway tokens, which then cost thirty-five cents, were often pressed into service as thirty-five cent coins, enriching the local numismatic scene and proving that the latest waves of immigrants were as ingenious and practical as their distant counterparts. This sort of response continues as we end the twentieth century, and we may expect it to be with us in the years to come. The papers included herein will give us one of our best and widest views of "The Token: America's Other Money."

The ten presentations contained in this volume suggest that research into the American token is entering a new phase, one which puts it at the forefront of numismatic study in this country. This is appropriate if overdue: the token frequently served as the linchpin of the lower portions of the nation's monetary system, and it is presentations and studies such as the ones contained herein which are serving to bring a recognition of the importance of America's "other money" into the wider numismatic community. Such dawning recognition is certain to bring additional research, additional publication in the field the American token.

The authors represented here have one trait in common: they are prepared to go beyond the received wisdom of earlier studies, to get to the bottom of a particular series or object, to find out the truth for themselves.

They are prepared to do so in various ways. For Daniel Freidus, the process involves stripping back generations of misapprehension concerning a token series, combined with a close attention to the chemical composition of the Higley coppers. He has already gotten notable results, and we can anticipate more to come as he progresses with his research in this area. In January 1995, the ANS awarded him a Groves Fund research grant for this purpose.

John Kleeberg has performed a similar task for the Theatre at New York token of the late 1790s; but his tools will be found in a systematic perusal of old drawings and prints rather than in metallurgical analysis. Both types of methodology are valuable: but they must be combined with a discernment and a will for hard work to yield the results seen in these two papers.

The Higley coppers and the Theatre at New York token share a common attribute: both are rare, making research into their origins a rep challenge. For Q. David Bowers, the difficulty arose not from the rarity of his subject but from its very abundance: as he wrote to me, countermarked American copper cents were long seen simply as mutilated coins, thus beneath the attention of the serious collector. His study, based on diligent research into the origins and nature of the copper countermarks, can be expected to change the reception of this type of material.

Eric P. Newman has also worked with abundance rather than with rarity, as his research addresses Hard Times tokens in a fashion which few of us had previously considered possible. His patient inquiries into nineteenth-century pamphlets, broadsides, and especially newspapers, has resulted in a particularly satisfying piece of work, one of the high points of a most distinguished career as a numismatic researcher.

George S. Cuhaj presents us with a different type of token, the Lecture. His work is based on a long and intimate acquaintance with the story of the development of the transportation network of America's largest city, whose growth (and that of the nation as a whole) occasioned the augmentation of a general, public money supply with a specialized, private one. In the present article, Cuhaj has demonstrated an analytical approach to his subject—reasoning things through and taking nothing for granted—which we saw earlier at the Coinage of the Americas Conference and this book which is its result; a critical spirit which Ins at the heart of the significant new discoveries being made in the field of the American token.

The critical spirit continues as we move through the nineteenth century. Robert Leonard demonstrates an admirable persistence and skill, bringing a solid presence to a most ghostly figure, A. M. Abrahams of Missouri. The career of this immigrant and his need to circulate money of his own go to the heart of the American story from the days of the colonies to the present; and we look forward to other specialists doing what Mr. Leonard has done for other issuers.

The Abrahams tokens of the 1850s are rare, offering particular challenges to the researcher. Those of the following decade are far more common, but they present challenges as well. For such a huge corpus, we know very little of a concrete nature about Civil War patriotic tokens and store cards—about who made them, who issued them, and why. But George Fuld performs a useful service by bringing together what is currently agreed upon, setting the stage for his own future research as well as that of others.

The cent-sized tokens were an answer to monetary scarcity on the bottom of the scale during the American Civil War. Encased postage stamps were a response to scarcity at a slightly higher level. The inventor and purveyor of the curious mica-and-brass stamp holders was John Gault, while the best-known issuer was probably J. C. Ayer, purveyor of a patent medicine, who allied public-spiritedness with the profit motive, gaining a notoriety which was far in excess of the dubious merits of the product he hawked. Wayne Homren's research is currently centered on Messrs. Gualt and Ayers, and his careful consideration of the actual pieces and contemporary newspaper reporting concerning them stands as another example of current numismatic excellence in token research.

Jules Reiver's paper shows that investigations into the American token need not be confined to original specimens: in his discussion of struck copies of early tokens, he has provided a signal service to researchers and collectors of early materials, by pinpointing and describing those enigmatic products of earlier American collectors, scholars and rogues. Their wares were tokens in two senses of the word: not only were they replicas of real tokens, but—as stand-ins for the genuine article, meant to fill holes in a collection until the real items could be procured—they were tokens in a second sense.

Finally, Russell Rulau's paper has brought American tokens, their myriad issuers, and those who collect them and investigate their histories, into a synthesis, granting us a last affectionate look at what was once considered a stepchild of American numismatics, but which is now claiming its full birthright. As researchers consider these homely pieces, as they investigate their humble issuers, gaining bits and pieces of the past from hard work in new directions and attention to detail in old, and as more and more of the mosaic comes clear, they are, I think, creating American numismatics in a way possible for few investigators in other branches of our nation's monetary past. For they are making visible progress, whose steps are not recorded in a new die state or subvariety of a well-known coin or note, but in entire new types, new issuers, new connections.

I personally look forward with pleasurable anticipation to new chapters in the story of "The Token: America's Other Money." When you read the contents of this book, I think you will agree with me.

-- Richard G. Doty Conference Chairman