Tokens were a nineteenth century form of what is called a loyalty
program today. Originally, when you made a purchase, the shop would
give you change in the form of tokens which could only be redeemed in
the same shop. In practice they were soon in general circulation
throughout the local community, but usually not beyond.
Some American mining companies had a far more insidious practice of
paying all or part of the workers' wages in tokens which could only
be used in the company-owned store, but I've never heard of that
outside the USA.
Peter Bell
On 11/04/2010, at 10:57 PM, Peter King wrote:
> What you have is strictly a token not a coin. In the late 18th
> century
> there was a shortage of small change and a number of industrialists
> minted
> tokens, which circulated like coins, but usually (I think) mainly
> in the
> area of the works. I think that many such tokens were minted by
> Matthew
> Boulton in Birmingham. Since the Parys Mine Company were producing
> copper,
> circulating copper tokens was natural, but the ironmaster John
> Wilkinson
> (for example) also did so.
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