There. I've finally updated this collection with the stuff I got from Andy ("engraved") in a trade, back in March.
He helped me fill three or four empty holes with some 1840s dates, and I also got the 1882 with the horse head from him. I had to give up a cool 1872 with a pictorial of birds and bamboo on it, as I recall, but since he swapped me the horse head, filled those other holes AND gave me one to fill the 1872 slot I'd just emptied, I didn't mind.
It's getting much tougher to fill holes in this set, as you can imagine. But I continue looking for pictorials ("scenics") to upgrade my pieces that are just simple initials or monograms.
Funny, there was an 1860 in the lot from Andy, too, and I can't find it. So that hole remains empty. I hope I didn't accidentally part with it in the big lot of dupes I just sold.
No, I've never traced a love token back to its original owner. Nor have I tried, because in most if not all cases, the original owners are long dead. I suppose it would be theoretically quite possible to do that, if enough information like an unusual set of first and last names were engraved on piece, or some event was commemorated.
I did have an interesting experience last night. Sometimes I do searches beyond eBay. Ebay is of course the motherlode for somebody searching for something really specific like a love token of a particular date, but even there, you run out of selection sometimes. So I did a Google search for "love token" (in quotes). Eight entries down, on the search results, Google shows five sample thumbnail images of love tokens.
There, right in the middle, is a piece I used to own. I got it from Musky1011. (He posted it earlier in this thread.)
It was an 1883 dime with lots of cool scrollwork (which resembled fiddlehead ferns to me), and the secondary date "1890" was engraved on the reverse along with initials. The thumbnail on Google takes you to a blog called "Coined For Money" which describes the piece as "exquisite example of a love token", which indeed it was. It says the piece was owned by "Jim P.", who's obviously Jim Popp, our own Musky1011.
The only reason I parted with that piece is because I found a supercool pictorial 1883 that has a chick hatching from an egg on the back of it.
Small world, huh. I've had moments like this throughout my numismatic career, where recognizable pieces pop up unexpectedly. One time I sold an 1854 large cent in a PCGS MS65 RD doily holder (it was on consignment- I could never afford such a piece myself), and a year or two later I noticed it in a case at the FUN show, with a pricetag about $1K higher than I'd sold it for. The dealer selling it at FUN was not, to my knowledge, the person I had sold it to on eBay. I swore that if that coin and I ever crossed paths again, I would have to figure out some way to buy it.
If our coins could only gossip about their past owners, who knows what they'd say. They certainly get around- even the ones that are no longer circulating in the traditional sense.
I just added the 1841, upgraded the 1857 to a pictorial (floral design), added the 1851 (its 1853 twin will be kept to the side since I already have that date), and upgraded my 1885 to a pictorial (horseshoe).
Pending are the pictorial upgrade to the 1877 (another coin with a horseshoe design), and (when I finish paying for it), I'll be adding another tough key date: the 1879! (Which is another "twin" coin, coming with its 1876 twin by the same maker).
It has been fun to play with this set a bit after it's lain dormant for so long. I think it's starting to look pretty good, though I definitely have plenty of room for upgrading to more interesting pictorials or better-engraved pieces.
I'll be getting the 1879 from seanq, who cherrypicked it out of a bulk lot last year, I think. (Around the same time as when I myself cherrypicked that 1880 from a bulk lot.)
He sent me some preliminary pictures. It comes with an 1876 "twin" that was obviously made by the same engraver, for someone in the same family (note the common last initial).
gonna disagree......different style 'J' and different loop as well as slightly different border lead my to believe they were made in similar style but by different engravers......but guess what? no one will ever know which of us is right because anyone who knows is dead
Yeah, I know they're both upside-down, for some reason. Ain't they supposed to have the ends turned up, to keep the luck from spillin' out, or somethin'? Eh, whatever.
It's been some time since I last updated this thread. I've finally gotten 'round to it.
Here's what's new.
1840. I can't remember buying it. It seemed to just magically appear in my album. Has that ever happened to you?
1854. Bought this last night. I thought that as a "semi-pictorial", it was a modest upgrade to the simpler one I had before. Thanks to eBay Bucks, it didn't cost me anything.
1861. I bought this after a previous eBay Bucks payout. It was one of those "must have" items for me. Not only was the pictorial an upgrade to the previous one I had, but the marsh scene sort of looks like where I live (near the Marshes of Glynn in Georgia). And the stork is rather eerie because the morning I bought this, a stork flew across the road I was driving down, practically in front of my windshield. Not only that, but this coin has all three of my initials, in sequence! If I ever sell off this collection, this one will be a "keeper". It's too bad the obverse isn't a bit better, but you can't have everything. (I mean, heck- all three of my initials? Couldn't ask for more, really.) That Civil War-era "RWS" might have been born in 1861. I have a pet theory that these "stork" pieces were christening or baby shower gifts.
1875. A very common date for love tokens. Still, I hadn't managed to get a pictorial until now. Really, I guess this shield is more of a "semi-pictorial", but it's a definite upgrade over a simple "initials" piece.
1879. There's one more key date outta the way! There were only 14,000 dimes struck in 1879- all of them at Philadelphia. It's on a super sharp host coin, too. I'd say it has around AU obverse details, meaning this would have been nearly a $500 coin if the reverse were intact, I guess. I bought this from "seanq". I heard it was a lucky cherrypick for him, just as the 1880 in this set was for me. It must have been a good year for key date love token dimes in bulk lots. I wonder how often that happens? Maybe folks just don't pay any attention to the dates, once they see it's a love token. (A love token? Pah! Throw it in the junkbox.) This also came with an 1876 which I believe was done by the same engraver, as mentioned in a prior post. The coins have a similar style and share a common initial "J".
1884. This awesome pictorial upgrades a very plain piece I had before. With its Brooklyn Bridge scene, it also makes a great companion piece to the 1887 Statue of Liberty-engraved piece I have. I've got a "Famous NYC landmarks" theme starting, here. The host coin of this token was struck a year after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, just as my Statue of Liberty piece's host coin was struck a year after the Statue was dedicated. So they're definitely contemporary carvings. I wish this piece was in better condition, but it's OK. The engraving is nice. I really had to fight tooth and nail on eBay to win it, too.
1886. I've added another lighthouse. So that's two lighthouses, two storks, two horseshoes, and two New York landmarks. Plus two matched pairs of cufflinks. This collection is starting to look like Noah's Ark, with all the pairs. For such a nicely done pictorial, this one went surprisingly cheap on eBay. Funny how someone so highly skilled as this engraver did all that intricate work, only to seemingly mess up the "P" initial with a slip of his tool. Then again, it might have been a different person putting the letters on. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that jewelers of the period had a stock of pre-engraved scenes done by master engravers to which they just added initials to later.
That's it for n...
Oh! Hang on a sec! I've expanded into the Barbers, now. Here are three to start off with:
With a lot of monograms, it is difficult (if not impossible) to determine the order of the initials. It's for that reason that I just list initials in alphabetical order when the order is otherwise undeterminable.
Well, me hearties, it looks as though my ship has finally come in!
This means it's goodbye to dear ol' Minnie.
Don't be sad, Minnie. I still love you and I've enjoyed our time together, but I think I know somebody who's gonna appreciate your beauty and give you a nice new home.
You've got a very engaging collecting specialty, lordmarcovan! Have you seen the article in The Numismatist, February 2012, entitled, "Exotic Gold Dollar Love Tokens"? I thought it was interesting.
I have a Dahlonega gold dollar love token (the only one that I've seen for sale in my collecting career), an 1853-D, with an Old English "G" on the obverse. I know of another collector that had an 1849-D gold dollar love token.
My only other foray into this area occurred a decade ago, when I bought my wife a love token with her three initials, made from a Morgan Dollar, for Valentine's Day.
So I parted with the 1873 "Minnie" above when upgrading to a pictorial, but hey, whaddya know, along came another Minnie, this one a pictorial in its own right, and on a host coin twenty years older. You know I had to have the top hat, right?
Oh- here's an upgrade I made last year and forgot about. Another "marsh and stork" scene, and pretty well engraved. I just realized I never updated this thread.
This collection has now reached its fifth anniversary, and I'm sort of at a tipping point. Do I proceed with it, continuing to upgrade as many pieces as possible to nice pictorials, but stick with the date set idea, meaning I'll need those tough 1844 and 1846 dimes I might never find (and if I did, I probably couldn't afford to do battle over)?
OR do I break this set up (keeping only two or three pieces) and retool the collection into a love token (and counterstamped or engraved) TYPE set, along Dansco 7070 lines? (Well, along the 19th century 7070 parameters, anyway).
Hmm.
I think the type set might be more interesting. Then again, I've got five years into this one. (Which is a long time for someone with my flighty attention span.)
What do y'all think?
(Don't tell me I can have my cake and eat it too by keeping this set AND doing the type set- I have too many collections already, and am trying to limit myself to perhaps five active collections at a time.)
OK, I've fallen off the fence and made up my mind. It's time to prune the collections, so this set is to be broken up and sold on eBay soon.
Gonna keep the 1861 with my initials on it, and maybe one key date and/or nice pictorial for my new endeavor ... I'm going for the 19th century engraved and counterstamped type set soon.
Deciding which few to keep now. Probably just one of each subtype, and the 1861 because it has all three of my initials on it.
Pay attention to the pair of New York- themed pictorials: I have a Brooklyn Bridge and a Statue of Liberty, both engraved within a year or so of the monuments they portray! Those are gonna be hot tickets. I had to pay more than $100 for the Brooklyn Bridge piece, and any time you get into 3-figure territory, that's steep for a love token. The Statue of Liberty MAMA is an old fave I won in a Heritage auction, but I think I'll part with her. I think the two NY-themed pieces should go to somebody in the Big Apple. Or alternately, somebody who buys the MAMA piece should also get the 1876 PAPA piece. There are some key dates in here, too. I might or might not keep the one I cherrypicked.
Anybody in the house named PETE? Boy, have I got a sweet pictorial for you! (Or will soon, when these are up for sale.) I've turned down offers on it in the past.
Comments
For the last year this collection has languished on a back burner, sadly neglected and in need of imaging. I've taken care of that now.
He helped me fill three or four empty holes with some 1840s dates, and I also got the 1882 with the horse head from him. I had to give up a cool 1872 with a pictorial of birds and bamboo on it, as I recall, but since he swapped me the horse head, filled those other holes AND gave me one to fill the 1872 slot I'd just emptied, I didn't mind.
It's getting much tougher to fill holes in this set, as you can imagine. But I continue looking for pictorials ("scenics") to upgrade my pieces that are just simple initials or monograms.
Funny, there was an 1860 in the lot from Andy, too, and I can't find it. So that hole remains empty. I hope I didn't accidentally part with it in the big lot of dupes I just sold.
The 1852 Lighthouse caught my eye right off the bat. A lot to look at in this collection for sure.
Thanks for posting the update.
Sugar magnolia blossoms blooming, heads all empty and I don't care ...
I did have an interesting experience last night. Sometimes I do searches beyond eBay. Ebay is of course the motherlode for somebody searching for something really specific like a love token of a particular date, but even there, you run out of selection sometimes. So I did a Google search for "love token" (in quotes). Eight entries down, on the search results, Google shows five sample thumbnail images of love tokens.
There, right in the middle, is a piece I used to own. I got it from Musky1011. (He posted it earlier in this thread.)
It was an 1883 dime with lots of cool scrollwork (which resembled fiddlehead ferns to me), and the secondary date "1890" was engraved on the reverse along with initials. The thumbnail on Google takes you to a blog called "Coined For Money" which describes the piece as "exquisite example of a love token", which indeed it was. It says the piece was owned by "Jim P.", who's obviously Jim Popp, our own Musky1011.
The only reason I parted with that piece is because I found a supercool pictorial 1883 that has a chick hatching from an egg on the back of it.
Small world, huh. I've had moments like this throughout my numismatic career, where recognizable pieces pop up unexpectedly. One time I sold an 1854 large cent in a PCGS MS65 RD doily holder (it was on consignment- I could never afford such a piece myself), and a year or two later I noticed it in a case at the FUN show, with a pricetag about $1K higher than I'd sold it for. The dealer selling it at FUN was not, to my knowledge, the person I had sold it to on eBay. I swore that if that coin and I ever crossed paths again, I would have to figure out some way to buy it.
If our coins could only gossip about their past owners, who knows what they'd say. They certainly get around- even the ones that are no longer circulating in the traditional sense.
sounds like fun research
bios of the wives of the 19 th century american elite might be a good start
i like challenges
Pending are the pictorial upgrade to the 1877 (another coin with a horseshoe design), and (when I finish paying for it), I'll be adding another tough key date: the 1879! (Which is another "twin" coin, coming with its 1876 twin by the same maker).
It has been fun to play with this set a bit after it's lain dormant for so long. I think it's starting to look pretty good, though I definitely have plenty of room for upgrading to more interesting pictorials or better-engraved pieces.
He sent me some preliminary pictures. It comes with an 1876 "twin" that was obviously made by the same engraver, for someone in the same family (note the common last initial).
gonna disagree......different style 'J' and different loop as well as slightly different border lead my to believe they were made in similar style but by different engravers......but guess what? no one will ever know which of us is right because anyone who knows is dead
www.brunkauctions.com
I especially like the 1883
Hey, I've got one complaint! That 1883 has my name on it, I wondered where that coin went!
Pete
Louis Armstrong
Yeah, I know they're both upside-down, for some reason. Ain't they supposed to have the ends turned up, to keep the luck from spillin' out, or somethin'? Eh, whatever.
Here's what's new.
1840. I can't remember buying it. It seemed to just magically appear in my album. Has that ever happened to you?
1854. Bought this last night. I thought that as a "semi-pictorial", it was a modest upgrade to the simpler one I had before. Thanks to eBay Bucks, it didn't cost me anything.
1861. I bought this after a previous eBay Bucks payout. It was one of those "must have" items for me. Not only was the pictorial an upgrade to the previous one I had, but the marsh scene sort of looks like where I live (near the Marshes of Glynn in Georgia). And the stork is rather eerie because the morning I bought this, a stork flew across the road I was driving down, practically in front of my windshield. Not only that, but this coin has all three of my initials, in sequence! If I ever sell off this collection, this one will be a "keeper". It's too bad the obverse isn't a bit better, but you can't have everything. (I mean, heck- all three of my initials? Couldn't ask for more, really.) That Civil War-era "RWS" might have been born in 1861. I have a pet theory that these "stork" pieces were christening or baby shower gifts.
1875. A very common date for love tokens. Still, I hadn't managed to get a pictorial until now. Really, I guess this shield is more of a "semi-pictorial", but it's a definite upgrade over a simple "initials" piece.
1879. There's one more key date outta the way! There were only 14,000 dimes struck in 1879- all of them at Philadelphia. It's on a super sharp host coin, too. I'd say it has around AU obverse details, meaning this would have been nearly a $500 coin if the reverse were intact, I guess. I bought this from "seanq". I heard it was a lucky cherrypick for him, just as the 1880 in this set was for me. It must have been a good year for key date love token dimes in bulk lots. I wonder how often that happens? Maybe folks just don't pay any attention to the dates, once they see it's a love token. (A love token? Pah! Throw it in the junkbox.) This also came with an 1876 which I believe was done by the same engraver, as mentioned in a prior post. The coins have a similar style and share a common initial "J".
1884. This awesome pictorial upgrades a very plain piece I had before. With its Brooklyn Bridge scene, it also makes a great companion piece to the 1887 Statue of Liberty-engraved piece I have. I've got a "Famous NYC landmarks" theme starting, here. The host coin of this token was struck a year after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, just as my Statue of Liberty piece's host coin was struck a year after the Statue was dedicated. So they're definitely contemporary carvings. I wish this piece was in better condition, but it's OK. The engraving is nice. I really had to fight tooth and nail on eBay to win it, too.
1886. I've added another lighthouse. So that's two lighthouses, two storks, two horseshoes, and two New York landmarks. Plus two matched pairs of cufflinks. This collection is starting to look like Noah's Ark, with all the pairs. For such a nicely done pictorial, this one went surprisingly cheap on eBay. Funny how someone so highly skilled as this engraver did all that intricate work, only to seemingly mess up the "P" initial with a slip of his tool. Then again, it might have been a different person putting the letters on. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that jewelers of the period had a stock of pre-engraved scenes done by master engravers to which they just added initials to later.
That's it for n...
Oh! Hang on a sec! I've expanded into the Barbers, now. Here are three to start off with:
1892.
1894.
1899.
There. Now that's all.
But I have a comment/question. I find it very hard to "decipher" many of the tokens that have initials on them. Maybe it is just my aging eyes.
So what initials are represented on the last token, the 1899? Is it CAP, CPA, ACP, APC, PCA, or PAC? (at least I an read the initials on that one)
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
My digital cameo album 1950-64 Cameos - take a look!
.....................................................
This means it's goodbye to dear ol' Minnie.
Don't be sad, Minnie. I still love you and I've enjoyed our time together, but I think I know somebody who's gonna appreciate your beauty and give you a nice new home.
I have a Dahlonega gold dollar love token (the only one that I've seen for sale in my collecting career), an 1853-D, with an Old English "G" on the obverse. I know of another collector that had an 1849-D gold dollar love token.
My only other foray into this area occurred a decade ago, when I bought my wife a love token with her three initials, made from a Morgan Dollar, for Valentine's Day.
I have a gold dollar that says "LM" on it on my trademark hat. It fits my whole "LordM" schtick.
Had a holey (non-love token) Charlotte gold dollar on there, too, but traded it away.
At least I THINK it was a Charlotte.
Though I live in GA and I visited Dahlonega once, I have yet to own a pre-1906 "D" mintmarked US coin.
PS- no, I haven't seen the Numismatist article since I let my ANA membership lapse a while back, to my shame.
Have thought of joining the Love Token Society but I don't know if that's even alive and active. Might be a real Sleepytown.
This means I'll be letting my shield down, so to speak.
Does anybody here have the initials "WLW", by any chance?
OR do I break this set up (keeping only two or three pieces) and retool the collection into a love token (and counterstamped or engraved) TYPE set, along Dansco 7070 lines? (Well, along the 19th century 7070 parameters, anyway).
Hmm.
I think the type set might be more interesting. Then again, I've got five years into this one. (Which is a long time for someone with my flighty attention span.)
What do y'all think?
(Don't tell me I can have my cake and eat it too by keeping this set AND doing the type set- I have too many collections already, and am trying to limit myself to perhaps five active collections at a time.)
Gonna keep the 1861 with my initials on it, and maybe one key date and/or nice pictorial for my new endeavor ... I'm going for the 19th century engraved and counterstamped type set soon.
Deciding which few to keep now. Probably just one of each subtype, and the 1861 because it has all three of my initials on it.
Pay attention to the pair of New York- themed pictorials: I have a Brooklyn Bridge and a Statue of Liberty, both engraved within a year or so of the monuments they portray! Those are gonna be hot tickets. I had to pay more than $100 for the Brooklyn Bridge piece, and any time you get into 3-figure territory, that's steep for a love token. The Statue of Liberty MAMA is an old fave I won in a Heritage auction, but I think I'll part with her. I think the two NY-themed pieces should go to somebody in the Big Apple. Or alternately, somebody who buys the MAMA piece should also get the 1876 PAPA piece. There are some key dates in here, too. I might or might not keep the one I cherrypicked.
Anybody in the house named PETE? Boy, have I got a sweet pictorial for you! (Or will soon, when these are up for sale.) I've turned down offers on it in the past.
Almost all the coins are sold, now, and did remarkably well.