Any ideas? Im stumped :(

[njnydigger]

Any ideas? I'm stumped

Found this "thing" over the weekend while hunting a site that dates back to the early 1920's. It looks like a token of some sort, but, I'm not even sure on that. It says "PHONE" on the bottom of the piece, that's it. No makers mark, no other names, nothing. Except for the cool design around the rim of the piece, there's nothing else for me to go on. Could it be a broken piece of an old phone maybe? I have a book on old tokens, but, nothing in there that even comes close

P.S. - It's a tad larger than a U.S. Quarter.

Driving me mad Any ideas

 

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[NGE]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

I think they were test coins used by telephone workers to test functionality of the pay phones back then........NGE

 

[Kenosha Kid]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

This site lists a lot of them (no pictures though). It might help you ID which one it was :

http://www.gilbertweb.com/Telephone Tokens for sale.pdf

 

[njnydigger]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

Thanks Kenosha How in the world you guys find these things I'll never know Nonetheless, nice find on the token page.

I didn't think it was worth anything, however, I'd like to get the story on this interesting piece. I emailed the site owner and will post the full details when I get them

 

[diggummup]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

Thanks Kenosha How in the world you guys find these things I'll never know Nonetheless, nice find on the token page.

I didn't think it was worth anything, however, I'd like to get the story on this interesting piece. I emailed the site owner and will post the full details when I get them

The value is not always monetary. Sometimes the history of the piece is the value and sometimes that is priceless. Every object has a story to tell.

 

[njnydigger]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

Just heard back from the token website owner. Looked at the pics and said he was "stumped". Said it "appears" to be a merchant token of some sort. Also stated that the merchants telephone number would normally follow the word "phone" on the token itself. However, without a phone number, he was hard pressed to come up with anything Take a look at the pics. There doesn't appear to have ever been a phone number after the word phone. Here we go again

 

[njnydigger]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

Tried emailing someone else who specializes in old phone tokens, so, we'll see what he comes up with. In the meantime, I cannot find ANYTHING even closely resembling what I found online. I did see ONE from Israel that had a hole in the middle and is used for phones, but, nothing from the US from the early or mid 1900's. Did find this info though;

Telephone tokens were once widespread medium of exchange for people wanting to talk on public phones with someone before there were telephone cards to collect and use. These tokens were once widely used in Europe, Israel, Japan, and South America, and are still used today in Turkey.

Phone tokens started in Chicago, where public phones would accept only tokens. These were used in the U.S. until 1944 when they were eliminated and most of the tokens were melted down to make shell casings. The earliest-known telephone token dates from 1885, when it was produced for the PAN Telephone Company in Saint Louis, Missouri. Rather than being deposited in the phone, the token was given to an attendant or placed in a coin box to gain access to the phone booth.

This practice of using tokens and allowing their specific value to float with the going rate for a phone call eventually became the standard world-wide practice. This came in especially handy in European countries where currencies changed once you crossed borders, but a token could still be useful.

In some countries, such as Italy, they were even used informally as cash equivalents.

 

[Kenosha Kid]

Re: Any ideas? I'm stumped

Tried emailing someone else who specializes in old phone tokens, so, we'll see what he comes up with. In the meantime, I cannot find ANYTHING even closely resembling what I found online. I did see ONE from Israel that had a hole in the middle and is used for phones, but, nothing from the US from the early or mid 1900's. Did find this info though;

Telephone tokens were once widespread medium of exchange for people wanting to talk on public phones with someone before there were telephone cards to collect and use. These tokens were once widely used in Europe, Israel, Japan, and South America, and are still used today in Turkey.

I've viewed most of the tokens from the countries you've mentioned (below site) and didn't find a match.

http://www.jviader.com/colect/fitxes/america.html

Closest I've found was one for S.N.E.T. Co. (Southern New England Telephone Co.) only because of the hole in the middle. Nothing else about it resembles yours ...