BILL NOYES ON CONDER TOKENS AND CONDER TOKENS

(Editor’s note: The following article was submitted to be published almost 20 years ago. It was not printed. When Bill Noyes, the foremost author on US large cents, heard that I was about to publish a new book similar to Bell’s Commercial Coins book he offered it again. He felt that the reason that it was not used then was that the powers-to-be wanted a balancing article. When that article wasn’t forthcoming they didn’t publish his. He left our organization because of the suppression of his piece.

Please read it as a 20 year old article as no attempt has been made to revise it to reflect things that have changed since it was written. I know that it is opinionated and provocative, and that everyone may find points with which they disagree. It is published here to promote debate, and to cause the readers to question and perhaps strengthen their own views of their collecting world. Better yet, why don’t you write a similar article stating your own views?)

N.C.L.T (Non-Circulating-Legal-Tender): The term creates instant disgust and profound lack of interest in any serious collector of real coins, whether one is talking about the plastic wrapped gems sold by the U.S. mint or some pseudo-foreign power like the Marshall Islands. Expensive and almost always much, much cheaper in the after-market, they are sold to the novice and often sour these potential coin collectors on Numismatics as a hobby. The damage these “instant losers” create in the minds of the public is huge.

The profits for the mints and private companies involved are considerable, and these profits allow them to cater to the cataloguers who include them as “real” coins: The numismatic advertisers who promote their products in splashy full color, full page ads and the ANA and other bourses who allow them to sell to a trusting public who is fooled by the slick booths and endorsement of the ANA or other organizers. Even worse than these pseudo-coins are the various medals and medalets with or without some small “bullion value” depicting some popular theme like Lady Diana – dead or alive – or breeds of cats or WWII airplanes.

Do not misunderstand me; there is nothing wrong or silly about collecting medals or medalets with space flights or ships or some such, but you must be clear that you are collecting medals and medalets, that you are not collecting coins and that the value structure and the desirability and consequently resale value falls under exonumia, not “real” coins.

In between these “real circulating coins,” medals, and medalets fall tokens – issued and maybe guaranteed by private individuals. “Real tokens” actually circulated alongside or in place of real coins, usually as a convenience or necessity in remote areas or in times of acute shortages of “real coins.” Tokens have been used for many centuries in numbers and for durations dictated by economic necessity; NCLT has been around for centuries but has proliferated since the end of the silver era in 1963; and medals and medalets have been around for centuries, usually struck to commemorate some great personage or event in history like Abraham Lincoln or the sinking of the Lusitania.

What, you might rightly ask, has all this tokens, medals, and NCLT business got to do with “Conder Tokens?” Actually, quite a bit because no series in history has such an undefined mixture of “real tokens,” pseudo-tokens, medals, medalets, and other numismatic ephemera than the issues lumped under “Conder tokens” by Dalton and Hamer.

Having bought my first “Conder token” from Randolph Zander in 1956 and having upwards of 800 pieces encompassing every category above, I am surprised that the present influx of collectors knows so little about what they are buying as “Conder tokens.” Maybe I’m naïve to think that today’s collectors are going to bother to learn anything about what they are buying beyond a perception of value and grade, but I hope that the collector who buys “Conder tokens” has stepped beyond the “slabbed Morgan dollars” and Full-Bell-Lines Franklin halves and maybe even the MS68 type coins mentality or lack thereof and has arrived at collecting “Conder tokens” after studying the series literature and at least has formed a vague idea of what pieces he wants to collect within the series – not even the Bobbes aspire to all 5000+ listed by D&H.

I suspect many, if not all, of the “new” Conder collectors just buy what appeals to them and in whatever grade (unfortunately many require the MS65 red as a residual of some past numismatic brainwashing) they can afford. These “appeal” buyers can rapidly acquire 400-500 without ever exceeding $50 each, even in nice UNC, but they will never acquire any of the most sought after pieces. To truly collect “Conder tokens,” a collector must break down the 5000+ D&H pieces into attainable groups.

R.C. Bell attempted to do this in the 1960s with varying degrees of success, but unfortunately, his books are out of print and quite hard to find. The point of all this is that there are “Conder tokens” and there are “Conder tokens,” and before a new collector takes out his wallet to buy a shiny new piece, they need to know what type of “Conder Token” they are buying because various types are more appealing, and unfortunately with more appeal goes the old numismatic problem child: More Value.

Although this is a huge overstatement, “real tokens” tend to be more valuable in numismatics than tokens struck for collectors, medals and medalets, and other miscellanea. “Real tokens” are themselves usually of less value than “real coins.” The premise is that given equivalent metals and rarities, a real coin will be worth more than a real token which will be worth more than a real medal and NCLT coins; tokens and medals will almost always be worth less than their coin counterparts.

As I said, this is an oversimplification but will serve the novice collector well as he tries to make sense out of the 5000+ D&H varieties. I cannot recommend more highly R.C. Bell’s Commercial Coins: 1787-1804. Not counting the Scottish issues of Farthing size in the end of D&H, Bell has identified most of the “real Conder tokens” – these are the necessity pieces that circulated alongside real coins or in place of them. An astute student can quibble with a few Bell included and argue about several omissions, but the 250+ listed by Bell are a sane and logical group for the new collector to start with.

Another very important offshoot of limiting your collecting to “real Conder tokens” is the collector will avoid the trap of buying many flashy but undesirable pieces that are not tokens but medalets or some such and thus valued by astute collectors at less than “real tokens” in equivalent grade. Many of the most attractive, large size “Conders” are in reality low mintage medals struck specifically for “collectors.”

These “non-token Conders” are certainly collectable but only by someone who understands where they fit in the numismatic chart of appeal and value. The fact that many of these say “token” means absolutely nothing – the now “famous” Sawbridgeworth ($41,900) says token but is surely no more than a high relief medal that was struck to take advantage of the “token craze” of the 1790s-early 1800s in Great Britain, and this frenzy was really the first proliferation of NCLT (and I’m using this term here a bit loosely to refer to non-circulating tokens) and medalets for the unsophisticated collector. The passage of time (200 years) does not transform a Kempson’s Gate from a medal to a real token – they were produced for sale to collectors and never intended to circulate – they were not “real” then, nor are they today.

To state the obvious, I have a great dislike for any numismatic item struck for the specific purpose of making money for direct sale to collectors with no intent to create a circulating medium – whether it be modern U.S. silver commems or Spence’s political medalets – Kempson’s buildings are no better than a set of Franklin mint ingots depicting the 50 U.S. state birds. I have no such contempt for real medals, such as the Middlesex political series that usually commemorates some historical personage or event, but the collector must understand that he is buying/collecting medals, not coins or tokens.

The CTCJ is the journal of the Conder Token Collector's Club. For more information on CTCC, see: www.ctcc.info

Wayne Homren, Editor

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