Check out my new love token!

[jtryka]

Although technically a love token, it's not very romantic. I picked this one up today as I was browsing for gold on eBay, and I couldn't resist. 1901 $5 The reason I couldn't resist was the engraving, which apparently says "Hiawatha Dec. 12, '08" Well this has some significance to me as my birthday is Dec. 12 (though I was born 61 years later) and I am a big train buff, and the Hiawatha was a named passenger train on the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific (aka The Milwaukee Road). I tried to look into the historical significance of the engraving without much luck, though I did notice the the Milwaukee Road made a big push to the Pacific NW in the 1906-09 timeframe. Anyhow, it's interesting how an engraving made almost 100 years ago can so closely capture one person's attention today.

[EVillageProwler]

It's very nice, but I'm personally offended that you'd dare talk about coins in a coin forum. Have you completely lost it?!?

 

 

EVP

 

[jtryka]

Sorry EVP, I should just stick to politics and bashing others. Speaking of which, have you seen my latest exchange with WSM?

[EVillageProwler]

Yes. Go check out my reply.

 

EVP

 

[Hoot]

Nice Jeff - It would be fun if you could come up with a bunch of tokens that somehow saluted the railways. I'll be they exist but are darn hard to find.

 

Hoot

 

p.s. I'll bet a lot of those tokens are really steamy.

[EVillageProwler]

Mark,

 

That was really bad... Yet, I am laughing!

 

EVP

 

[jtryka]

Yes, that was bad, but I still smiled!

[Coinosaurus]

If you want to do further research on love tokens, check out the Kurt Krueger sales from the late 1980s - he has literally hundreds of these photographed. The majority are seated dimes with initials of people on them (might be fun to form a date set). Gold tokens and larger silver denominations are more unusual.