2017-06-22 Thu

Have a look at Civil War store cards, a presentation of scarce and unique coins. It consists of many pieces that are not represented in major collections. Many pieces offered here are from the Q. David Bowers Collection and beyond the elements of rarity, nearly all are Mint State!

But first, a bit of background. A primer, so to speak:

When the Civil War was going on, in 1862 and 1863, there was a shortage of small circulating change. Die sinkers grabbed the opportunity to create tokens, mostly the size of a one-cent piece in Cincinnati, New York, Chicago and Boston. It was divided into two categories store cards and patriotic pieces.

The Civil War Token Society issued the new third edition of U.S. Civil War Store Cards, which is a must read for anyone who is of a curious nature and has an interest in history and tokens. The field of Numismatic is dynamic and still, draws a crowd. This can be said for specialised series: Colonial coins, early copper coins, federal silver by die varieties. These series are nothing but opportunities to collect them over a long period of time. The Civil War tokens are inexpensive. A basic collection of hundreds of different Civil War merchants can be assembled from under $100 per coin for Mint State, through $500 to $1,000.

The Numismatist and many other publications ran lists and feature articles on Civil War tokens. For your knowledge, the first issues of the American Journal of Numismatics featured these tokens and were nicknamed as copperheads.

In the year 1925, George Hetrich and Julius Guttag published an impressive book listing such tokens by HG numbers. However, until the second half of the century, these remained in effect. The father and son team of Melvin and George Fuld took over and revived the listings completely and created Fuld numbers for store cards and political tokens.

For the various Civil War tokens, letters were given for metals, such as "a" for copper, "b" for brass, and so on, including "f" for silver. By this system, a political token combining dies 360 and 436, struck in copper, is designated as 360/436a. Some patriotic tokens depicting the four presidential candidates of 1860 are called medalets or small medals. For that matter, these particular pieces were made before the Civil War. As with many numismatic categories, the definition of Civil War token is flexible.

Civil War store cards, or advertising tokens, were arranged by state, then by a number representing the city, followed by a letter representing a merchant within that city, then a number representing the specific die combination, then a letter for the metal.

Within numismatics, there are several popular rarity scales, with the Sheldon Scale and the Universal Rarity Scale being the most widely used. Civil War token have their own scale as devised by George and Melvin Fuld:

Civil War Token Rarity Scale

R-1: More than 5,000 estimated to exist

R-2: 2,000 to 4,999

R-3: 500 to 1,999

R-4: 200 to 499

R-5: Scarce: between 75 and 200

R-6: Very Scarce: between 20 and 75

R-7: Rare: between 10 and 20

R-8: Very Rare: between 5 and 10

R-9: Extremely Rare: between 2 and 5

R-10: Unique: only 1

Whitman Publishing issued a new book on the series by Q. David Bowers in 2013, a Guide Book of Civil War Tokens—Patriotic Tokens and Store Cards 1861-1865: A History and Price Guide to Major Types. As was the later book on Hard Times tokens this was a best seller. The book was highly successful that the edition was reprinted. More comprehensive, and completely illustrated, is the third edition of U.S. Civil War Store Cards mentioned above.