Maryland Token and Medal Society
Zoins
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I've run across the Maryland Token and Medal Society (MD TAMS) Journal a few times recently in online archives (Archive.org and NNP).
At first I thought this was a regional offshoot of TAMS, but in looking into this I found out it's not necessarily regional by membership, but it's regional by subject matter, meaning just tokens and medals related to Maryland, and they have over 100 issues of their journal! It also seems to not be related to TAMS at all!
It looks like quite the organization!
Do other states have such organizations?
Founding & Mission
The Maryland Token and Medal Society was founded in 1979 by A.Vernon Taylor and Millard W. Hajek. Realizing the need to establish a club where like-minded exonumia collectors could meet and share knowledge, a meeting was held in April of that year at the Maryland State Numismatic Association Convention. There it was decided to found MD TAMS, and the club was born.
Over the next two years the club grew and in July 1981 the club was incorporated. Shortly thereafter, the club acquired the status of a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
From its inception, MD TAMS focused its emphasis on education, and the need to document Maryland’s long and rich history of token and medal emissions.
At its start, the two primary goals of the society were to launch a quarterly journal and a compile catalog of all known Maryland merchant tokens. In the Fall of 1979 the inaugural edition of MD TAMS Journal was published.
Comments
Token and medal collecting groups are usually formed around two main themes -- topical collecting or geographical collecting. Most states or regions have had exonumia organizations with many now dormant due to the aging population of collectors (predominantly trade token collectors). Some are still active and meet regularly and even put on shows. Some are informal while several still put out newsletters, etc., such as:
IKO - Indian - Kentucky - Ohio group that has newsletters and has put on a fall show near Dayton, O. for 30+ years.
NWTAMS - WA/OR based that also has a yearly show (currently in Vancouver WA)
WESTS - Western States Token Collectors Society that has a yearly shows (currently in Jackson CA)
NETTC - Nebraska Token Collectors Club that has published a large two volume NE catalog
SETS - Southeastern Token Society which I believe is currently inactive
MTAMS - Michigan TAMS, uncertain status
FL TAMS - uncertain status
Other states such as IA, TX, MN, etc. have/had informal gatherings, breakfast meetings, on line gatherings. The most active groups revolve around topics - Civil War tokens, tax tokens, transportation tokens, scrip collectors, medal collectors (MCA), trade tokens, etc.
Great info @tokenpro! I've been running into MD TAMS more because their digitized journals are coming up more in my searches. It's great to see this lists of other organizations! Hopefully, I'll run across their digitized journals in the future