Civil War Tokens to Help the United States

The United States was in the midst of war with itself in 1863 and was suffering in many ways. A major place of suffering was the economic struggle that the war caused and with it the hoarding and reduction of circulating coinage. There were many, many private trade tokens called Civil War Tokens (CWT) issued to work through that challenge.

1863 Civil War Token next to 1863 cent showing same diameter and different thickness — CWT by cent shows same diameter and thickness difference

The practice of issuing tokens was very popular in states like New York and Michigan but were extremely limited in others such as New Hampshire and Maine.

Patriotic Civil War Tokens

The short-lived yet very prolific period of CWTs created a wide variety of tokens. The first type are Patriotic tokens. These were the set of tokens that did not include any business or private entity's name. They are called "Patriotic" due to their use of patriotic motifs.

The motifs range from replicating popular United States coins of the age to wording in support of the war effort - "Our Army" is but one example and "UNION FOR EVER" is another.

Patriotic Civil War token showing Union for Ever and Masonic Symbolism — Civil War Token with Union For Ever on reverse

Patriotic tokens were struck at many of the engravers of the day yet only a small number were attributed to the engraver. The lack of attribution makes it hard to track many tokens to their source location. Even so, the locations where they were popular can help in finding local engravers that potentially were the source.

It's worth noting that the CWTs were the same diameter but thinner than the Cupronickel small cents circulating between 1861 and 1863 (including the first part of 1864 also). The 1864 small cent was changed in composition partway through the year and reduced in thickness to dimensions that closely resembled the popular CWTs.

Civil War Store Card Tokens

In many cases, merchants issued tokens that were redeemable at their stores to make trade easier with limited US coinage circulating. These tokens had one side that represented their store (generally with the store name) and the other side was frequently common to the Patriotic Civil War Tokens.

Store Card Civil War token redeemable at a single business for redemption — Civil War Token with business name on obverse

These tokens helped the store as well as their communities continue to function with the limited low denomination coinage. Unlike the patriotic tokens, the Store Card Tokens were redeemable at the issuing store for either product or for use in place of the money. This helped with business but demanded the business allow customers to redeem tokens for their cash equivalent.

There are stories about businesses keeping to their word and exchanging money for the tokens. There are also less positive stories about the business not having enough US coinage to exchange and the turmoil at that store that followed including large groups of people not trusting the tokens and rushing in to redeem at the same time.

Breadth of Options

Most years of coinage for small cents in the US have millions of identical examples of one or two varieties of coin. Due to the sheer number of Civil War Tokens that were issued, there are thousands of varieties made in the few years they were issued. The collective total issuance of all varieties is estimated to be well over 20 million pieces which makes some extreme rarities and some common issues.

That breadth of varieties and combinations gives a collector a huge field to collect in and the option to find some truly fascinating items.

Errors and Varieties Were Common

Earlier, I said that there were a lot of engravers that made CWT's. That means that some of the smallest and most constrained businesses were minting these tokens. Most of the private minters were significantly more budget restricted than the US government mints. These businesses would continue to use the dies until they were truly unusable.

I have found it interesting to look through token catalogs and follow one particular obverse or die. In many cases, one die was used in a variety of combinations of other dies. It is clear which was the first token die combination and which were the later ones based on the progressive wear visible in the detail as well as die cracks that grew to die breaks (cuds) and the same dies were still used.

Another common error is a rotated die. These errors are in the alignment of the obverse and reverse which show up at any orientation to one another. The alignment ranges from coin alignment (top of the obverse aligned with bottom of the reverse) to medal alignment (top of obverse aligned with top of reverse).

Due to this common die usage resulting in worn or damaged dies and haphazard alignment, there is much less premium on die varieties and damaged dies when compared to coins that have the same errors.

Can You Assemble a Complete Set?

Anything is possible... but a complete collection of Civil War tokens would be extremely difficult to build because of the quantity of truly rare and unique specimens that exist. That is even more difficult today given the increasing popularity of these tokens.

Variety of Civil War token obverse and reverse designs — Collage of different Civil War Tokens

It is possible to define a type of token you want to collect and build a set that meets your interest. For example, you could pick a state and build a set of the cataloged tokens from there. You could also pick a patriotic motif and find all the different obverses that are paired with your favorite reverse die.

Information Sources for Research

This area of the hobby is growing now and the most recent thorough resource I have found is the 4th edition of the "Standard Catalog of United States Tokens 1700-1900" by Russell Rulau and published by Krause Publications. That book is where I started to understand how broad this area of collecting is.

There are older texts dating into the early 1900s to start the cataloging of a significant number of tokens. A primary source was written by George Hetrich, M.D. and Julius Guttag in 1924 titled "Civil War Tokens and Tradesmen's Store Cards". Their content is heavily referenced and built upon with releases in the near 100 years since it's initial publication.

An Entire New Collection in Exonumia

I'll introduce a new term all the way at the end - exonumia. This term means numismatic items that are not coins. Civil War Tokens represent the most popular type of exonumia in the United States.

This branch of collecting can be very rewarding with the variety of options and directions that you can build a collection. Consider looking in this direction as you continue to build your collection. This helped me further enjoy my coins (and exonumia) and I hope you can expand in this direction also!