(moved) DIGGER'S DIARY FLASHBACK (#2): a review of some of the interesting tokens I've dug over the
lordmarcovan
Posts: 43,530 ✭✭✭✭✭
This post was moved from the US Coin Forum, where off-topic posts about metal detecting (and presumably about Exonumia as well) have now been totally forbidden. Hence the duplication with the other post of this title here. Since there were so many replies to this one, I will leave it instead of deleting my posts, like I did on some of the other recently moved (and therefore duplicated) threads.
Since you may have already read this here, where it belongs, disregard this version and let it sink.
While discussing exonumia and locally-significant tokens with a friend, I was inspired to make this post about some of the interesting tokens I have dug up during my years of metal detecting. I thought a sort of review might be interesting. I would also welcome any additional information that can be discovered about any of these pieces. Sometimes they are more interesting to me than an old coin would be, and I do love my old coins. In many (or most) cases, they are rarer than the coins they circulated alongside. On one online token page recently, I read that the Montezuma Lumber Company pieces below are rated R-10, which sounds pretty rare to me?
I do not display modern exonumia such as arcade tokens in my "keeper" album- it gets thrown into the "wheat penny jar". These are the pieces I dubbed "keepers", interesting or worthy enough to keep in the Digger's Diary album. Some of the pictures aren't the greatest, but they're temporaries, as I struggle through imaging the past 16 years' worth of finds. Enjoy.
-RWS
DD-019- Shell Oil Presidential series- Washington (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 11/13/1993, Asheville, NC.
How odd and interesting that the first example of this widely-produced series I found happened to be #1 in the series!
DD-030- Beacon Mfg. Co. Cafeteria, Swannanoa, NC- Good For 25c (ca. 1930s); found 1/18/1994, Black Mountain, NC.
I met my old NC detecting mentor, Jim Dalton, while working at Beacon in the early 1990s. The plant, a textile mill that was
one of the world's larger manufacturers of blankets, shut down around 2002 and the building burned not long afterward.
The plant was in Swannanoa but I found the token in the neighboring town of Black Mountain. Jim offered me ten bucks
for it, and I refused. (And ten bucks was a lot of money to me in those hand-to-mouth, poverty-stricken days.)
DD-055- Montezuma Lumber Co., Montezuma, NC, Good For 5c (ca. early 1900s); found 8/4/1994, Asheville, NC.
One of three identical pieces found on the same site and same day. I later found a Montezuma 50c token (DD-072, below)
on another site. I never give away or sell my dug coins or tokens, but since I had three of these from the same day, I gave
one to my detecting buddy Jim Dalton and another to the late Herschel Sutton, a wise numismatic/exonumic mentor of mine.
DD-066- Shell Oil Presidential series- Madison (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 8/21/1994, Swannanoa, NC.
Chalk up another one for the Presidential series. I wonder how many lifetimes
it would take me to complete the series, using only my own detecting finds?
DD-072- Montezuma Lumber Co., Montezuma, NC, Good For 50c (ca. early 1900s); found 9/6/1994, Swannanoa, NC.
See the aforementioned Montezuma 5c piece, above, of which I found three in one afternoon.
These tokens apparently conformed to their coin counterparts in size, if not metallic content.
The 5c tokens were about nickel-sized, and this piece is approximately the size of a half dollar.
DD-110- Shell Oil Presidential series- Tyler (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 1/3/1995, Brunswick, GA.
Moved to Georgia in late 1994, and continued my digging of the Shell Oil presidential series.
They must have been everywhere Shell gas was pumped. I find them in coin bulk lots, too.
DD-114- "Swami" Good Luck token (ca. 1933); found 2/15/1995, Brunswick, GA.
I believe these were associated with the 1933 World's Fair somehow, or so I have been told. Found in one of
my favorite "hotspots", this piece was astonishingly shallow in the ground and remarkably well preserved.
If my finds from the immediate vicinity were any indicator, its lucky magic worked well for me. Note the swastikas,
which were still in use as a good luck symbol. Ironically, 1933 was the year the Nazis took power in Germany.
The swastika on the crystal ball is counterclockwise, as the ancient Zoroastrians rendered it, while the one on
the reverse of the token is clockwise, like the Nazi version. Though not really rare, this is a favorite find of mine.
DD-122- Eagle Tailoring Co., Jacksonville, FL, Good For $1.00 on Suit Order (ca. early 1900s); found 3/7/1995, St. Simons Island, GA.
Roughly dollar-sized, possibly from the first decade of the 1900s, when aluminum was a bit of a "premium" metal?
I suspect the hole is a later addition and not the way the token was issued. Perhaps the hole was a cancellation of sorts?
DD-123- Glynco Naval Air Station Officers' Club, Glynco, GA- Good For 50c In Drinks (ca. 1940s); found 3/9/1995, Brunswick, GA.
I dug an identical piece on the same site more than a decade earlier as a teenager, back when I neither kept good records of my finds,
nor the finds themselves, which all got lost when I moved off to college. For this reason, my recordkeeping of coin finds starts in 1992,
upon my return to the hobby. Parts of the old WW2-era NAS Glynco are now the site of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and
local airport. I've heard that the blimp hangars at Glynco were some of the largest wooden buildings in the country, if not the world,
until they were demolished around 1971. Like the Montezuma Lumber 50c above, this piece roughly conforms to half dollar size.
DD-132- Royal Brand Suits "Award Of Merit" promotional token (ca. 1920s-'30s?); found 4/8/1995, Brunswick, GA.
Good boy! Your daddy bought one of our suits! A 1939 Mercury dime (DD-133) came up minutes
later, a few feet down the sidewalk. The same sidewalk strip produced a nice set of silver WW2
paratrooper's wings in 2007, proving that nobody ever "finds it all" in just one or two passes.
DD-135- Atlantic Shrimp Co., Brunswick (GA) and St. Augustine, FL- Good For "15" (weight tally? Ca. 1930s?); found 4/13/1995, Brunswick, GA.
A friend of mine found an identical token in 2007, a few blocks away. I did some checking in the library's Special Collection,
in the old city directories, but there were gaps in their collection. If I remember correctly, I believe the Atlantic Shrimp
Company was listed in the 1934 directory but not in the 1937.
DD-154- OK Vender- "Loaned For Amusement Only- gaming token(?)" (ca. 1930s-'40s?); found 10/4/1995, Brunswick, GA.
I believe this type of token is what was referred to as a "plug nickel" at the time, giving rise to the expression "not worth a
plug nickel", as folks would plug up the hole in these to bring them up to the proper weight for use in nickel vending machines.
DD-155- Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" token (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 10/17/1995, Brunswick, GA.
Roughly dollar-sized. I'll bet the car had fins. Found on a sidewalk strip adjacent to a car dealer's lot, not surprisingly.
DD-166- Georgia City Coaches, Brunswick, GA, transit token (ca. 1940s); found 6/7/1996, St. Simons Island, GA.
Found in the hardpan under the roadbed during paving repair, right near an 1898 Barber dime (DD-165).
This area had its boomtime during World War II, when our local shipyards built Liberty ships.
I think it is the only time Brunswick has had a public transportation system. It doesn't now.
DD-172- Orange Street School, 1c Lunch Check (octagonal, uniface, ca. early 1900s?); found 10/29/1996, Asheville, NC.
Back to my old Asheville diggin' grounds, for a visit. There is an Orange Street in Asheville, not too far from the old
house on Charlotte Street where I found the the token, but if there was ever a school there, it is long gone now.
DD-174- Wright & Gowen, St. Simons Mills, GA- Good For 5c In Merchandise (ca. 1873-1908); found 1/21/1997, St. Simons Island, GA.
Ironically, I have detected the most on Gascoigne Bluff, the very place where the St. Simons Mills were located from 1873 to 1908, but this
token was found on another part of the Island, where I found my first two coins from the 1700s. (Spanish half-reales: DD-161 & DD-162.)
DD-247- General Motors "Pontiac, Chief of the Sixes" token (ca. 1926); found spring-summer, 1999, Raleigh, NC.
I found this piece in my sister's front yard in Raleigh, during a visit. I was rather lax in my recordkeeping at the time.
I thought this was another addition to the "cars with fins" theme, from the '50s or so, but upon researching further,
I was surprised to discover that the first Pontiac six-cylinder car dubbed "Chief of the Sixes" rolled off the lines in 1926.
DD-255- University Drug Store, "One Glass Soda" (ca. late 1800s/early 1900s, uniface, incuse lettering); found summer-fall, 1999, Brunswick, GA.
This piece was found in a park that has been a great source of Indian Head cents, including some nice ones from
the 1880s, as well as an 1877-S dime (DD-266). It is obviously quite old, and I suspect it could be from the same era(?).
Note the initials "JK" scratched onto the blank reverse. Ol' J.K. really loved to slug down a sasparilla at the University Drugstore,
apparently. What's odd is that there's no university here. Whether there was a University Drug Store or not, I have yet to discover.
DD-264- Press & Radio Club, Atlanta, GA, 10c (ca. 1930s-'40s); found 10/31/2002, Sharpsburg, GA.
While my wife visited a friend in Atlanta, I drove down to Sharpsburg to visit my own friend, Blue Cole, for some detecting.
On an old vacant lot once occupied by a house that burned down in the 1950s, I was astonished to find a 1926-S Oregon Trail
commemorative half dollar (DD-263), only a couple of inches down. This token proved to be my only other noteworthy find, however.
It was in truly horrid, encrusted condition and I almost threw it in the "wheat penny jar" with the worthless modern tokens, but some
wirebrushing improved it this much, at least. Speaking of Wheat cents, I was surprised to see that not so much as a single one turned
up on that fine fall afternoon, but the commemorative half and this token were sweet Halloween "trick or treats", nonetheless.
DD-284- Green River Whiskey "Good Luck" token (ca. 1935); found 7/31/2005, Ridge Spring, SC.
I don't know if it is lucky to drink Green River Whiskey, but it is lucky to find their tokens! While we visited a nice old bed & breakfast inn,
the innkeepers graciously let me detect the yard. I found this token very near another old token (see below), around the base of an old
pine tree, so perhaps they were dropped by a child playing. A 1908 Indian cent (DD-283) was found not too far away, that same night.
A previous visit to the same yard in October 2003 had produced an 1893 Indian cent (DD-265). The innkeeper's husband took a liking to this,
so I bought him a nicer example online and had it shipped to them.
DD-285- Company M, 6th Infantry token- 5c (ca. late 1800s/early 1900s, octagonal); found 7/31/2005, Ridge Spring, SC.
Found the same night and under the same tree as DD-284, above, I suspect this piece is a bit older, though it was likely dropped
around the same time. I have a hunch it could be from the Spanish-American War era, and suspect it does not date much later than WW1.
I've been unable to find out much about it, though, short of the guess that it is a military post exchange or sutler's token of some kind.
DD-291- Georgia City Coaches, Brunswick, GA, transit token (ca. 1940s); found mid-October, 2006, Brunswick, GA.
Another example of the same type as DD-166, above. Interestingly, this was found on the same sidewalk strip and within a
few feet from the spot where I had found the Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" piece (DD-155, above), back in 1995. You can never get it
all in just a few passes, and old sites keep producing new finds, often surprisingly close to where goodies have turned up previously.
These tokens are relatively tiny, and are smaller than a dime, so it is no surprise that many of them ended up in the ground.
DD-298- Knights of Pythias 50th Anniversary medal (10-sided, dated 1914); found 1/10/2008, Brunswick, GA.
I was very pleased to find not only such an interesting medal, but a dated piece, at last! This find was also discovered
since the advent of my journal-keeping era, in which I now write about my outings in great detail. Read all about it here.
Since you may have already read this here, where it belongs, disregard this version and let it sink.
While discussing exonumia and locally-significant tokens with a friend, I was inspired to make this post about some of the interesting tokens I have dug up during my years of metal detecting. I thought a sort of review might be interesting. I would also welcome any additional information that can be discovered about any of these pieces. Sometimes they are more interesting to me than an old coin would be, and I do love my old coins. In many (or most) cases, they are rarer than the coins they circulated alongside. On one online token page recently, I read that the Montezuma Lumber Company pieces below are rated R-10, which sounds pretty rare to me?
I do not display modern exonumia such as arcade tokens in my "keeper" album- it gets thrown into the "wheat penny jar". These are the pieces I dubbed "keepers", interesting or worthy enough to keep in the Digger's Diary album. Some of the pictures aren't the greatest, but they're temporaries, as I struggle through imaging the past 16 years' worth of finds. Enjoy.
-RWS
DD-019- Shell Oil Presidential series- Washington (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 11/13/1993, Asheville, NC.
How odd and interesting that the first example of this widely-produced series I found happened to be #1 in the series!
DD-030- Beacon Mfg. Co. Cafeteria, Swannanoa, NC- Good For 25c (ca. 1930s); found 1/18/1994, Black Mountain, NC.
I met my old NC detecting mentor, Jim Dalton, while working at Beacon in the early 1990s. The plant, a textile mill that was
one of the world's larger manufacturers of blankets, shut down around 2002 and the building burned not long afterward.
The plant was in Swannanoa but I found the token in the neighboring town of Black Mountain. Jim offered me ten bucks
for it, and I refused. (And ten bucks was a lot of money to me in those hand-to-mouth, poverty-stricken days.)
DD-055- Montezuma Lumber Co., Montezuma, NC, Good For 5c (ca. early 1900s); found 8/4/1994, Asheville, NC.
One of three identical pieces found on the same site and same day. I later found a Montezuma 50c token (DD-072, below)
on another site. I never give away or sell my dug coins or tokens, but since I had three of these from the same day, I gave
one to my detecting buddy Jim Dalton and another to the late Herschel Sutton, a wise numismatic/exonumic mentor of mine.
DD-066- Shell Oil Presidential series- Madison (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 8/21/1994, Swannanoa, NC.
Chalk up another one for the Presidential series. I wonder how many lifetimes
it would take me to complete the series, using only my own detecting finds?
DD-072- Montezuma Lumber Co., Montezuma, NC, Good For 50c (ca. early 1900s); found 9/6/1994, Swannanoa, NC.
See the aforementioned Montezuma 5c piece, above, of which I found three in one afternoon.
These tokens apparently conformed to their coin counterparts in size, if not metallic content.
The 5c tokens were about nickel-sized, and this piece is approximately the size of a half dollar.
DD-110- Shell Oil Presidential series- Tyler (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 1/3/1995, Brunswick, GA.
Moved to Georgia in late 1994, and continued my digging of the Shell Oil presidential series.
They must have been everywhere Shell gas was pumped. I find them in coin bulk lots, too.
DD-114- "Swami" Good Luck token (ca. 1933); found 2/15/1995, Brunswick, GA.
I believe these were associated with the 1933 World's Fair somehow, or so I have been told. Found in one of
my favorite "hotspots", this piece was astonishingly shallow in the ground and remarkably well preserved.
If my finds from the immediate vicinity were any indicator, its lucky magic worked well for me. Note the swastikas,
which were still in use as a good luck symbol. Ironically, 1933 was the year the Nazis took power in Germany.
The swastika on the crystal ball is counterclockwise, as the ancient Zoroastrians rendered it, while the one on
the reverse of the token is clockwise, like the Nazi version. Though not really rare, this is a favorite find of mine.
DD-122- Eagle Tailoring Co., Jacksonville, FL, Good For $1.00 on Suit Order (ca. early 1900s); found 3/7/1995, St. Simons Island, GA.
Roughly dollar-sized, possibly from the first decade of the 1900s, when aluminum was a bit of a "premium" metal?
I suspect the hole is a later addition and not the way the token was issued. Perhaps the hole was a cancellation of sorts?
DD-123- Glynco Naval Air Station Officers' Club, Glynco, GA- Good For 50c In Drinks (ca. 1940s); found 3/9/1995, Brunswick, GA.
I dug an identical piece on the same site more than a decade earlier as a teenager, back when I neither kept good records of my finds,
nor the finds themselves, which all got lost when I moved off to college. For this reason, my recordkeeping of coin finds starts in 1992,
upon my return to the hobby. Parts of the old WW2-era NAS Glynco are now the site of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and
local airport. I've heard that the blimp hangars at Glynco were some of the largest wooden buildings in the country, if not the world,
until they were demolished around 1971. Like the Montezuma Lumber 50c above, this piece roughly conforms to half dollar size.
DD-132- Royal Brand Suits "Award Of Merit" promotional token (ca. 1920s-'30s?); found 4/8/1995, Brunswick, GA.
Good boy! Your daddy bought one of our suits! A 1939 Mercury dime (DD-133) came up minutes
later, a few feet down the sidewalk. The same sidewalk strip produced a nice set of silver WW2
paratrooper's wings in 2007, proving that nobody ever "finds it all" in just one or two passes.
DD-135- Atlantic Shrimp Co., Brunswick (GA) and St. Augustine, FL- Good For "15" (weight tally? Ca. 1930s?); found 4/13/1995, Brunswick, GA.
A friend of mine found an identical token in 2007, a few blocks away. I did some checking in the library's Special Collection,
in the old city directories, but there were gaps in their collection. If I remember correctly, I believe the Atlantic Shrimp
Company was listed in the 1934 directory but not in the 1937.
DD-154- OK Vender- "Loaned For Amusement Only- gaming token(?)" (ca. 1930s-'40s?); found 10/4/1995, Brunswick, GA.
I believe this type of token is what was referred to as a "plug nickel" at the time, giving rise to the expression "not worth a
plug nickel", as folks would plug up the hole in these to bring them up to the proper weight for use in nickel vending machines.
DD-155- Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" token (ca. 1950s-'60s); found 10/17/1995, Brunswick, GA.
Roughly dollar-sized. I'll bet the car had fins. Found on a sidewalk strip adjacent to a car dealer's lot, not surprisingly.
DD-166- Georgia City Coaches, Brunswick, GA, transit token (ca. 1940s); found 6/7/1996, St. Simons Island, GA.
Found in the hardpan under the roadbed during paving repair, right near an 1898 Barber dime (DD-165).
This area had its boomtime during World War II, when our local shipyards built Liberty ships.
I think it is the only time Brunswick has had a public transportation system. It doesn't now.
DD-172- Orange Street School, 1c Lunch Check (octagonal, uniface, ca. early 1900s?); found 10/29/1996, Asheville, NC.
Back to my old Asheville diggin' grounds, for a visit. There is an Orange Street in Asheville, not too far from the old
house on Charlotte Street where I found the the token, but if there was ever a school there, it is long gone now.
DD-174- Wright & Gowen, St. Simons Mills, GA- Good For 5c In Merchandise (ca. 1873-1908); found 1/21/1997, St. Simons Island, GA.
Ironically, I have detected the most on Gascoigne Bluff, the very place where the St. Simons Mills were located from 1873 to 1908, but this
token was found on another part of the Island, where I found my first two coins from the 1700s. (Spanish half-reales: DD-161 & DD-162.)
DD-247- General Motors "Pontiac, Chief of the Sixes" token (ca. 1926); found spring-summer, 1999, Raleigh, NC.
I found this piece in my sister's front yard in Raleigh, during a visit. I was rather lax in my recordkeeping at the time.
I thought this was another addition to the "cars with fins" theme, from the '50s or so, but upon researching further,
I was surprised to discover that the first Pontiac six-cylinder car dubbed "Chief of the Sixes" rolled off the lines in 1926.
DD-255- University Drug Store, "One Glass Soda" (ca. late 1800s/early 1900s, uniface, incuse lettering); found summer-fall, 1999, Brunswick, GA.
This piece was found in a park that has been a great source of Indian Head cents, including some nice ones from
the 1880s, as well as an 1877-S dime (DD-266). It is obviously quite old, and I suspect it could be from the same era(?).
Note the initials "JK" scratched onto the blank reverse. Ol' J.K. really loved to slug down a sasparilla at the University Drugstore,
apparently. What's odd is that there's no university here. Whether there was a University Drug Store or not, I have yet to discover.
DD-264- Press & Radio Club, Atlanta, GA, 10c (ca. 1930s-'40s); found 10/31/2002, Sharpsburg, GA.
While my wife visited a friend in Atlanta, I drove down to Sharpsburg to visit my own friend, Blue Cole, for some detecting.
On an old vacant lot once occupied by a house that burned down in the 1950s, I was astonished to find a 1926-S Oregon Trail
commemorative half dollar (DD-263), only a couple of inches down. This token proved to be my only other noteworthy find, however.
It was in truly horrid, encrusted condition and I almost threw it in the "wheat penny jar" with the worthless modern tokens, but some
wirebrushing improved it this much, at least. Speaking of Wheat cents, I was surprised to see that not so much as a single one turned
up on that fine fall afternoon, but the commemorative half and this token were sweet Halloween "trick or treats", nonetheless.
DD-284- Green River Whiskey "Good Luck" token (ca. 1935); found 7/31/2005, Ridge Spring, SC.
I don't know if it is lucky to drink Green River Whiskey, but it is lucky to find their tokens! While we visited a nice old bed & breakfast inn,
the innkeepers graciously let me detect the yard. I found this token very near another old token (see below), around the base of an old
pine tree, so perhaps they were dropped by a child playing. A 1908 Indian cent (DD-283) was found not too far away, that same night.
A previous visit to the same yard in October 2003 had produced an 1893 Indian cent (DD-265). The innkeeper's husband took a liking to this,
so I bought him a nicer example online and had it shipped to them.
DD-285- Company M, 6th Infantry token- 5c (ca. late 1800s/early 1900s, octagonal); found 7/31/2005, Ridge Spring, SC.
Found the same night and under the same tree as DD-284, above, I suspect this piece is a bit older, though it was likely dropped
around the same time. I have a hunch it could be from the Spanish-American War era, and suspect it does not date much later than WW1.
I've been unable to find out much about it, though, short of the guess that it is a military post exchange or sutler's token of some kind.
DD-291- Georgia City Coaches, Brunswick, GA, transit token (ca. 1940s); found mid-October, 2006, Brunswick, GA.
Another example of the same type as DD-166, above. Interestingly, this was found on the same sidewalk strip and within a
few feet from the spot where I had found the Oldsmobile "Rocket 88" piece (DD-155, above), back in 1995. You can never get it
all in just a few passes, and old sites keep producing new finds, often surprisingly close to where goodies have turned up previously.
These tokens are relatively tiny, and are smaller than a dime, so it is no surprise that many of them ended up in the ground.
DD-298- Knights of Pythias 50th Anniversary medal (10-sided, dated 1914); found 1/10/2008, Brunswick, GA.
I was very pleased to find not only such an interesting medal, but a dated piece, at last! This find was also discovered
since the advent of my journal-keeping era, in which I now write about my outings in great detail. Read all about it here.
0
Comments
Also, I hope things are going well for you and yours lately.
Sugar magnolia blossoms blooming, heads all empty and I don't care ...
<< <i>I wondered what it must of been like to present those token for food or trade. Can you amagine, standing in line and flipping the token up in the air for a hearty meal after a day of hard work. >>
Some of those, like the Wright & Gowen and perhaps the Montezumas, were company scrip that they actually paid people in at one time, maybe.
Imagine that same day of hard work, after week or two of the same, and then you got paid in tokens like these, which could only be spent at "the company store" at inflated prices! Maybe these particular companies didn't do it, but I know some of the Appalachian coal mines used that kind of rookery, and kept their workers in virtual slavery. From what I've read, though, the St. Simons Mills where the Wright & Gowen piece came from were a good place to work. So was Beacon. I personally didn't care for working in a textile mill, but Beacon was better than the other plant I worked in, and I was sad to hear when it closed and the old building burned down.
The man from whom I "borrowed" the Holey Coin Vest idea from, Johnny Atha of Raleigh, NC, had a number of old coal company scrip tokens on his "coin shirt". I asked him why he put them on there and he told me the story of the double-dealing store owners and the companies who paid only in scrip. He said he was a descendant of coal miners, and he wore the tokens as a mark of sympathy and respect for them.
I'm off for a new digging adventure shortly, as soon as I suit up and grab the gear! I'll probably have to wipe cobwebs off the detector- it has been far too long.
Look for a new "Digs O' The Day" installment tonight or tomorrow!
Looking at these old token finds fired me back up. Wouldn't it be neat if I dug another token. We'll be in the right neighborhood, only two or three blocks from where that "Swami" good luck piece came up.
I love the slogan, "The Whiskey Without Regrets" on the Green River Whiskey Token- I could have used some of that in my undergrad days at Centenary College and LSU. The Wild Turkey I preferred had no such guarantee!
Am I the only one who was reminded of the opening to the song "Greased Lightning" from the Grease musical while reading that Oldsmobile 88 token? You know, the old "This car is automatic, systematic, hyyyyyyyyyydromatic- this car is Greased Lightnin!".
I'm sure I'm just dating myself.
-Randy Newman
<< <i>Great post LordM.... good luck on your hunt today... and thanks for the toke history... Cheers, RickO >>
I hope that was not a Freudian slip there.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Near as I can tell, your token is actually from 1949! That was when the dubbed the 88 the Futuramic 88, and it, according to the book, rode on a 119.5 inch wheelbase. It grew larger throughout the 1950s and 60s, and by time it went back down shorter they were no longer using the term Futuramic.
I'm not done researching but I would say with about 80% surity you could say that's a 1949 Oldsmoble token.
I'm going to borrow your image and post it on the Hemmings forum and see what they have to say...
i enjoyed all of these posts (sorry for keeping you up but i think everyone appreciates the outcome)
the Beacon & Orange Street School pieces are especially interesting to me because they are in my back yard so to speak
Click on this for a possible Orange St. School connection
www.brunkauctions.com
www.brunkauctions.com
K
Ray
<< <i>I did some reasearch, and I can't find my book that has that information, but another book had quite a bit of info on Oldsmobile.
Near as I can tell, your token is actually from 1949! That was when the dubbed the 88 the Futuramic 88, and it, according to the book, rode on a 119.5 inch wheelbase. It grew larger throughout the 1950s and 60s, and by time it went back down shorter they were no longer using the term Futuramic.
I'm not done researching but I would say with about 80% surity you could say that's a 1949 Oldsmoble token.
I'm going to borrow your image and post it on the Hemmings forum and see what they have to say... >>
Hey, thanks! I found a page (Wikipedia, maybe) that mentioned the 1949 advent of the Futuramatic, but that tidbit about the width of the wheelbase that you plucked from the token inscription eluded me, since I am not terribly car-savvy.
Today's hunt was not spectacular. I did find one old coin, however (a very modest one), and some doodads. And look for the automotive theme to be continued when I post the story of today's outing.
<< <i>My first car was a 1951 Oldsmobile with the Rocket 88 engine. >>
My favorite car was a 'shiny black '73 Cutlass S with a 350 Rocket engine and the stock ralley wheels on it with the little chrome beauty rings. Vrrroom vroom!
It's interesting- If Orange Street School became Asheville High School and they moved from the site in 1908, I guess that fits. I found a 1913 Type 1 Buffalo in that yard, too. And Indian cents, Barber coins, and other goodies came up over the course of our several visits. Great old house, with a big yard, which sits back from the street. The front yard was a virtual COIN-u-copia, I'm tellin' you.