Is this a pattern? -- Br N Borneo

spoon

Came across this on eBay.. I don't have any text that lists patterns so I'm not sure exactly what this is by the book. Can someone clarify it for me? This is purely out of curiosity as I'm broke.. snipers, snipe away

eBay link

eBay img:

SingaporeCoinGuy

This is the 20 cents Copper Proof Token of the Labuk Planting Company, a tobacco plantation in British North Borneo now known as East Malaysia.

This token has a huge error, the obverse shows 20 cents but the reverse written in Chinese is wu fen, which is 5 cents.

tbirde56

Perhaps intentional, to give English-illiterate Chinese immigrants a low value trade coin and those natives literate in English a higher value trade coin?

spoon

Interesting! Do you have any idea when it might have been made?

So that lower chinese character is 'cents'? I noticed the 5 but thought it might have been 5 in some native currency (I'm not too familiar with the area) where 1 unit = 4 cents?? (does seem odd, I admit.. but I'm ignorant on this count!)

Maybe I'll have to scrounge up some money for it afterall

Thanks Francis

SingaporeCoinGuy

Spoon, I have no record of when this token was made by the Labuk Planting Co, but other tokens produced by other plantation companies had dates of late 19th Century, (1880) and early 20th Century (1923). I guess that you can date this token using this time frame.

Brad, I doubt that you could fool those English-illiterate Chinese immigrants for long, they may be illiterate but they were not stupid when it came to money.

tbirde56

I agree! It may have been a shortsighted brainchild of double standard greed, though. After all, it was a company with company stores and poor, uneducated workers. The 'secret' no doubt got out fast but if they had no other place to spend these wages then what options did they have? A strike? It's an interesting and believable theory but only that. I'd like to be disproved but the greed of men has produced stranger things.

SingaporeCoinGuy

Brad, it would have been a huge deception; to suffer a 15 cents loss when a 1/4 cent could buy you a decent lunch during that time period. But the greed of men knows no bounds.

MacCrimmon

This reminds me of the old cotton mill scrip in the US, whereby the mill workers were paid mostly in "company money" which could only be used to buy overinflated goods at the "mill store".

1jester

Greetings, SingaporeCoinGuy!!! Long time no see. Glad you're still around. Do you have any idea what this token might be worth?

SingaporeCoinGuy

1Jester, the latest catalogue that I have, values this token at Malaysian Dollars $350.00, approximately US$85.00. You can discount it by more than half this price for its true value.

1jester

Thanks!

tbirde56

I don't know if this Unc coin is representative of the majority of the rest made but if so it may indicate that they didn't see much use for whatever reason. A specialized look at the history of the area or the companies there might be insightful also. I wonder if one exists.