Description
Featured here are several specialty coal tokens, such as those red or green fiber tokens produced during WW2 to save metals for the war. Or those error types produced with the wrong spelling for the town of Prenther, WV. Here are also shown odd shapes, unusual metals, unusual chops and those high grade examples from the Winding Gulf Coal Company.
A coal scrip token is basically ‘a pay token’ with a stated value issued to workers, often as an advance on wages, (a big benefit to many) as Coal towns thrived with the influx of Europeans and immigrants from all over to these areas in Appalachia.
Tokens were made in different….
DENOMINATIONS; 1¢ to 50¢ plus $1 or more
SHAPES; round, square, triangle and with different cancellation chops or without chops.
METALS & FIBER: brass, copper, nickel, WW2 Fiber & zinc.
These were in common use from the early 1900’s until the late 1960’s, although federally outlawed on several occasions, some organizations managed to work around those prohibitions.
Country music great Merle Travis (album… Folk Songs of the Hills / sung by … Tennessee Ernie Ford) in the song ’16 Tons’ sings about these very tokens.