HOLABIRD JACK HADDOCK NEVADA TOKENS, PART 4

During the process of informational discovery, absolute treasures were found. That's right – treasures! Information is just as important as gold, and there's plenty here. That's what makes token collecting so fun. It opens the eyes to unseen history – to stories that have never been told. And you've got it right here.

In most cases, it was not a simple "look up in the Gazetteer." All too often the directory canvasser missed businesses. The same holds true for newspaper searches – only different. The merchants often never advertised. If it was a small mining camp, then so what? There was no need to advertise, even if it was in a nearby town newspaper. Also, these businesses were not made from the money tree, and most were stressed to the bottom of the wallet, so there was no money to advertise. One needs to think laterally – into a myriad of possibilities, such as proprietor names, who bought what, when, and so forth. Maybe you have to back into it – look at the entire spectrum of time the saloon was in business. The number of permutations is huge. I tried to explore them all. But still … there are at least two tokens for which I could find nothing. Research is not an easy task. The rewards are terrific. Pure "gold." I hope you find some.

There are a couple of tokens in this collection, and some in your own collection, that may have been misattributed in the past. Richard Greever has done a fantastic job of trying to keep track of all the American tokens with tokencatalog.com, and now the task is handed to TAMS, the Token and Medal Society. And you can help. Become a member.

For those tokens which may have been misattributed in the Haddock Collection, I have sufficient discussion to identify the piece, in general.

Token collecting in the American West has gone on since the 1850s. With demand, comes higher prices. Higher prices invite fraud. There are what appear to be many fakes of Nevada tokens. These are not counterfeit – they are not copies of existing pieces. They are fantasies – things made up from the imagination. Until we, as a collecting universe, positively know who has made these things, we cannot absolutely state they are fake. At one time, I thought we could. But no, I've seen way too may genuine pieces made by lousy, inexperienced die makers to make the assumption that every poorly made piece is a fake.

A list was published in the 1990 Nevada Token Book. There are more. Most of these pieces have very specific attributes in common. As an example, look at the reverses. Each and every one is non-standard, not seen in this form anywhere else. But was there a legitimate lousy die sinker out there in the c1900- 1910 period? Maybe time will tell. After all, the Bigfoot story finally came out …

We have a significant collection of Jack's "spurious tokens" that are thought to be fakes, but can't guarantee fake or real. If interested, please inquire.

This is a special sale. The old company is not in business. I am retired. We stated last year, there would be some special private sales from time to time, including the Tom Westervelt mining artifact and American mining stock collection, now slated for 2027. We, and I, am not open for random consignments. I will consider very special collections as time allows. Virtually every single one of the folks that were a part of my Holabird Americana team is very thankful to all of you. We had a great run, had a ton of fun, and made collecting fun for tens of thousands of people, as well as one of my key objectives: education. Thank You!

For more information on the sale, or to bid, see:
Jack Haddock Nevada Town Token Collection Auction(Session 1) (https://holabirdamericana.liveauctiongroup.com/auctionlist.aspx?t=JH1)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
HOLABIRD JACK HADDOCK NEVADA TOKENS, PART 1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n41a21.html)
HOLABIRD JACK HADDOCK NEVADA TOKENS, PART 2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n42a20.html)
HOLABIRD JACK HADDOCK NEVADA TOKENS, PART 3 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n43a19.html)

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