HOLABIRD JACK HADDOCK NEVADA TOKENS, PART 1

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 41, 2026, Article 21

While Fred Holabird has retired and closed his auction business, he left the door open some special private sales from time to time. One of those will take place November 6, 2026 when Holabird offers the Nevada Town token collection of Jack Haddock. The sale announcement is far more than just that - Fred delves into the history of Nevada token collecting, research and rarity as well as new digging and detecting techniques and advanced digital research platforms. It's lengthy and quite useful. Here's the first of four parts. -Editor

Jack started collecting tokens before he could count his toes. I met him in 1976 when I was enthralled by embossed local drugstore bottles. The concept that these could come from remote Nevada ghost towns was one I couldn't get away from. Then the fact that as a mining geologist, I got to go all over Nevada to many of these sites … and get paid for it! Wow! Then Jack says "Wait a minute! There's tokens that go with these places!" I was hooked. Oh yeah – that was fifty years ago.

Jack worked for the First National Bank of Nevada, and he too got to get out and about a bit, as he got involved with bank real estate deals. A jovial character, he found and met many collectors across Nevada, and introduced me to many. I wasn't after tokens at first, but what really got me going later was after a number of years in the mining exploration business, I had been to so many of these crazy, nutty little mining camps that I just had to collect stuff rom them. Paper, tokens, bottles … it didn't matter. Bring it on!

We put together the first Nevada token and bottle book in 1977. It was a softbound book with yellow cover. Jack had a great idea of putting a copy of a blank Virginia and Truckee Railroad stock certificate on the back, and we would fill in the collector's name that bought the book. I loved the idea. Back then, the only reference work that even remotely covered the fact that Nevada Ghost Town tokens existed, was a book by Adele Reed in 1974, "We Dug Those Dumps." Adele and her husband Bill were wonderful folks, and as I did geologic work in the White Mountains east of Bishop, I got to spend a lot of time with them. Her Nevada token collection was the first big Nevada tokenc ollection that Jack purchased, and it really got him going. Me? I was still stuck on gold/silver deposits and old bottles!

John Schilling, one of the co-authors of the first book exclusively devoted to Nevada Tokens along with Sheriff Hal Dunn (of Carson City) and Len Hoskins (of Elko) was a good friend and another mining guy. He got his start in New Mexico, and years later became the chief geologist for the Nevada Bureau of Mines for 17 years. Naturally, he collected Nevada and New Mexico tokens, so I got to meet all his collecting buddies in both states too! I sold John's Nevada token collection, along with mine (at the time) many moons past … maybe in the 1990s … memory fades. It was a lot of fun for everybody. Later, I sold Hal's collection too.

Meanwhile Jack got picky. His favorite were tokens with the state name spelled out entirely. In a quick statistical study, that's about 15% of all different Nevada tokens by variety in 1990. In short, 295 different Nevada tokens have the word spelled out "NEVADA" out of 1919 tokens listed in the 1990 Nevada token catalog. Jack's collection is so special that perhaps 25% of the collection is, was, or was thought to be unique. Another 25% may be only two specimens known. Another fun fact is that most of the businesses issuing tokens were saloons, hence the twelve and a half cent value, or "one bit" drink.