Can I get a little ID help/ German translation please?

ndgoflo

Hi all, just sorting through a mixed world lot, and I came across what I believe to be some type of German token.

It is about the size of a U.S. cent, and appears to be made of brass clad steel?

One side has a German heraldic eagle, with "Posemuckel Hamburg" "Gepragt Anno 1979" around the perimeter.

The other side has a large "50" within a circle, and "Dieser ?aler Wird Nur Im Posemuckel In Hamburg In Zahlung Genommen" around the perimeter.

Can anyone please ID this piece or translate the text? I could post pics, but that could take some time.

My best guess is that it is a bus token or something of the sort. Any help at all is appreciated.

DCH

German beer/merchant token from the 80s or 90s. Some Info and picture.

ndgoflo

Thanks for the link DCH, that's the same token that I have. It's always nice to know what it is that I'm collecting.

How about the translation? Anyone care to help me out with that?

satootoko

A (very) rough translation of the reverse from Babel Fish is "This token is accepted as payment only at Posemuckel In Hamburg."

Babel Fish chokes on "gepragt" but the rest of that legend's reference to the year 1978 indicates that it may mean "issued", "valid", or .

Sapyx

You can always try running it through a web translator like BabelFish, though it works better if you include all the umlauts and accents!

According to my German dictionary, "Geprägen" means stamped, struck as in coinage, so I assume it's referring to the coin, not the beer. "Anno" is of course Latin for "year", and not in common use German - the whole token has an "old fashioned" theme going.

"Posemuckel" isn't in the dictionary, so it's geographic in origin. Apparently, it was the name of a town in what is now Poland (that's the Polish eagle on the token there), and the name has come into colloquial use to mean somewhere remote, out in the country, and old-fashioned - "Hicksville", "hillbilly" or "back of beyond" might convey some of the sense of the word - around here we say things like "back of Bourke" or "beyond the black stump" to mean the same thing. Here's an English translation of a German wikipedia entry. Using it as the name of a beer garden / disco / nightclub like that would have humorous overtones.

"In Zahlung Genommen" BabelFishes to "Taken in payment".

"Taler" is of course the name of an old predecimal German coin (also spelled "thaler") - something people living in "Hicksville" would presumably still be using.

So we have "This thaler will only be accepted in payment in the Posemuckel, Hamburg".

Hope this helps.

ndgoflo

Thanks alot for the links Sap. I especially like the Babelfish link. I wasn't aware that such a site existed. I'll definately put it to use quite often. I truly appreciate all of your help.