Now that I have my Dalton & Hamer, I have a few questions...

chaze215

Is there anyway to determine value of the tokens?

And.....if the token doesnt have the particualr province on the token, is there a quick way to find it in the book?

Any feedback/info would be appreciated!

farthing

There are no current price guides for Conder tokens. Currently you just have to develop a set of price ranges based on rarity, desirability and condition.

Paul and Bente Withers of Galata press (England) are intending to publish a price guide in 2010 covering 17th-19th century tokens. Paul and Bente are the writers/publishers of the now standard text on 19th century English tokens.

crazyhounddog

Yes, I wish I had the answer for you as I would also like to know....

Conders

For values you must study past prices from different sources. As farthing has mentioned, desirability, condition and rarity are the main factors. All three are interwoven pretty well.

This point seems kind of obvious but is worth mentioning as it is the most easily overlooked and takes time to acquire...When considering condition you must also take into account what is average for that particular issue. If I may borrow the words of Allan D. there was a lot of 'handiwork' involved in manufacturing Conders and therefore there can be a lot of variation in quality. Some manufacturers were concerned mostly with the appearance of their product where others cared much more about the message and less about the quality of the strike, centering, etc. Also, some tokens circulated as money, some were popular pocket pieces, others stayed mostly in cabinets. So pricing can be a bit more complicated because of these things. The best thing to do is to look at a lot of material and have many resources at your disposal, books, friends, dealers, and so on.

farthing

Also, the idea of publishing a price guide is somewhat controversial. Like CWTs and SCDs, most conder tokens are thinly and infrequently traded. They are not like US coinage were you see multiples of every grade point listed in every auction. There is no Heritage for you to do a quick lookup of the history of trades for a given token in a given grade.

A price guide for conders (and CWT and SCD price guides before them) always raises questions on whose interest is being served by the published price. Also, the market for conders has grown quite a bit in the last few years, any prices listed may not be relevant in a few short years.