Paris Ill Civil War Token
ash111416
Posts: 2 ✭
Hello I've stumbled across a Civil War token and cannot find any information on it anywhere online. Hoping someone here can help me out. It's octogon shaped says Whalen Bros. across the top Paris, Ill along the bottom 10cents in the middle and absolutely nothing on the back. Even the local Historical society has never seen this coin before. New here so will have to try to figure out how to upload pictures
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Comments
Your token is not a Civil War token but what is most commonly referred to as a trade token or "good for" token used by private merchants all across the U.S. from the post-Civil War period to the present. The token you describe (images below courtesy of tokencatalog) is uniface with all incuse (cut into) lettering of a style used mainly from the 1880's to roughly the WWI era (1914 or so). Most later tokens were issued struck up rather than all incuse.
I don't have any historical information on your piece but the majority of the tokens of this era were used in bars and saloons. The token is not listed in the Vacketta catalog of Illinois tokens but that is not surprising as that catalog is about 40 years old and thousands of additional Illinois tokens have turned up since it was written. I know of at least three other examples of your token - two pictured on tokencatalog, one of which was recently auctioned and a third example that will be in an upcoming eBay auction. If you are doing research on this business, concentrate on the 1890-1910 period based on the die style of the piece.
@ash111416 ... Welcome aboard.... You have further information in the post above... Show us yours when you can post pictures. Cheers, RickO
My bad - your piece is the companion 10c to the round 5c token that I imaged. Often times different denominations were ordered in different shapes to aid in identifying the denomination (especially in dark bars, etc.). Neither tokencatalog nor the Vacketta Illinois catalog list a 10c but I do know of one example in an upcoming auction.