Sales Tax Tokens 2 2

[Hoghead515]

I was reading through a March 1944 issue of the Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine and I came across a checklist of sales tax tokens. It was a list put together by Emil Di Bella from Bronx N.Y.   Bella was assisted by Russell E. Silvius and Herbert E. Rowold. It shows we're state issues, provisional issues, private issues, and even unofficial issues. Looks like there were many different kinds and made from many different materials such as aluminum,  brass, zinc, cardboard,  colored plastics, etc.  Some were solid and some holed. I bet there are a few hundred contained in this checklist. My questions are, what exactly are sales tax tokens? What was the need for them?  Are these the same as the hard times tokens?  I was wondering why they call them TAX tokens. I would love to learn more about these if anyone has any information or anything to add. It doesn't explain nothing about them. It just has the checklist and a brief description of each one. Thank you for all replies. 

[Conder101]

The time was the Great Depression, Unemployment was skyrocketing, businesses were closing  and government revenues were way down both Federally and locally.  At the same time there was greater demand for governments to do more and that meant they needed more revenue.  The answer for most was a sales tax applied to ALL purchases. (News flash up until there there was no sales tax.)  Most states set their tax rate at 1%. 

Now at that time, Great Depression remember, an income of a dollar a day was often a good rate of pay.  So a great many purchases were for LESS than $1, but a 1% tax applied to sales of less than $1 meant a tax of less than one cent had to be collected.  How do you collect the  $0.002 tax on a 20 cent purchase?  The solution was to create tokens with values in mils or 1/10 of a cent.  Merchants purchased these tokens from the state and used them to return change to their customers for the tax.  Buy that 20 cent item, give the merchant 21 cents and get 8 mils back in tokens, or give him 20 cent and 2 mils in tokens.  And it still worked for larger purchases.  Say you mad a $2.25 purchase, the tax would be 2.25 cents or 2.3 cents.  So you would pay $2.27 and 3 mil tokens. and so on.

As time passed and income, prices, and sales tax rates rose the fraction of a cent gained or lost by rounding meant less to people and the tax tokens were phased out.  The last state to do away with them was Missouri sometime around 1961 to 64, not sure exactly when.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Conder101

[RWB]

OK. I think Condor101's recollection is likely better than mine....

Beginning with West Virginia states raise money by adding a retail sales tax to all purchases. Common values were 5 mills (1/2-cent) and 1 mill (1/10-cent) per dollar or fraction thereof. With no 1/2-cent or 1/10-cent coins states had tokens in metal, plastic, paper and other materials printed and these were exchanged between customer and merchant to pay the sales tax. For a time there was a squabble between states and the Treasury about the legality of tax tokens, and Treasury considered minting legal tender tax tokens. However, the idea was dropped when states declared their pieces were not legal tender but tax receipts.

I think the last of these vanished in about 1947 as states adopted rounding to the nearest cent.

One funny point - during the Treasury/state confusion, FDR designed a couple tax coins, just to see what might happen.

There are several tax token books. Some of the members can give you the titles and dates printed.

Edited March 4, 2021 by RWB

[Hoghead515]

Thank you all for the replies. Learned something new today. I never knew they existed till I saw them in that book. Very interesting information. I got an understanding now of the purpose of them. I never even heard  anyone ever talk about them before unless it was mentioned and I just can't remember. I'm sure they told us something about them back in school in history class. I remember studying about the Great Depression quite extensively. I wish I had paid more attention and tried to do better. Wish I could do it over again and differently.  It has become a passion here lately learning about all these things and the history behind them. I really appreciate you all taking the time to help me. Joining NGC and becoming part of this chat board is one of the best things thats ever happened to me. 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Hoghead515

[Conder101]

It is highly unlikely they would have mentioned sales tax tokens in your schools history class.

[DWLange]

All history texts are woefully neglectful of numismatic information, which is a tremendous oversight. Few things affect our lives more than money, but it is completely overlooked when relating the conditions of everyday life in various time periods. Think of what Americans had to go through during the Civil War, with all coins disappearing and being replaced with stamps and then small notes that looked like stamps. The USA paper currency depreciated to half its coin value by 1864, while the CSA notes and bonds lost their value completely. You'll rarely see anything about this mentioned in books written by Civil War historians.

[Hoghead515]

3 minutes ago, DWLange said:

All history texts are woefully neglectful of numismatic information, which is a tremendous oversight. Few things affect our lives more than money, but it is completely overlooked when relating the conditions of everyday life in various time periods. Think of what Americans had to go through during the Civil War, with all coins disappearing and being replaced with stamps and then small notes that looked like stamps. The USA paper currency depreciated to half its coin value by 1864, while the CSA notes and bonds lost their value completely. You'll rarely see anything about this mentioned in books written by Civil War historians.

That makes me wonder what else was left out of what we were taught. That is something that is very important and should have been included. Currency probably had alot to do with alot of the chain of events. How everything was funded. Thank you for the information. Got me to doing alot of thinking. 

[Bitto]

On 3/4/2021 at 6:03 AM, Conder101 said:

The time was the Great Depression, Unemployment was skyrocketing, businesses were closing  and government revenues were way down both Federally and locally.  At the same time there was greater demand for governments to do more and that meant they needed more revenue.  The answer for most was a sales tax applied to ALL purchases. (News flash up until there there was no sales tax.)  Most states set their tax rate at 1%.  Now at that time, Great Depression remember, an income of a dollar a day was often a good rate of pay.  So a great many purchases were for LESS than $1, but a 1% tax applied to sales of less than $1 meant a tax of less than one cent had to be collected.  How do you collect the  $0.002 tax on a 20 cent purchase?  The solution was to create tokens with values in mils or 1/10 of a cent.  Merchants purchased these tokens from the state and used them to return change to their customers for the tax.  Buy that 20 cent item, give the merchant 21 cents and get 8 mils back in tokens, or give him 20 cent and 2 mils in tokens.  And it still worked for larger purchases.  Say you mad a $2.25 purchase, the tax would be 2.25 cents or 2.3 cents.  So you would pay $2.27 and 3 mil tokens. and so on.

As time passed and income, prices, and sales tax rates rose the fraction of a cent gained or lost by rounding meant less to people and the tax tokens were phased out.  The last state to do away with them was Missouri sometime around 1961 to 64, not sure exactly when. Here personal tax advisor near me yourbooksontime.com...

 

yes, you're right

Edited May 14, 2021 by Bitto

[JKK]

It's a pretty big hobby, Hog. The token guys in our club seem to end up doing the presentation almost half the time, and a lot of states used to have them. The Washington ones are among the most common out here, naturally, but now and then I bump up against CO, KS, MO, even AL tokens. And as with errors and CONECA, the token folks have TAMS. There's an annual show in our area each year (I haven't been; they are not my thing).

[Hoghead515]

On 5/14/2021 at 11:45 AM, JKK said:

It's a pretty big hobby, Hog. The token guys in our club seem to end up doing the presentation almost half the time, and a lot of states used to have them. The Washington ones are among the most common out here, naturally, but now and then I bump up against CO, KS, MO, even AL tokens. And as with errors and CONECA, the token folks have TAMS. There's an annual show in our area each year (I haven't been; they are not my thing).

I would love to add a couple to my collection. I've been trying to collect more of certain things like the GW quarters but I also would like alot of diversity as well. And I'd love to add some of those. 

[JKK]

12 hours ago, Hoghead515 said:

I would love to add a couple to my collection. I've been trying to collect more of certain things like the GW quarters but I also would like alot of diversity as well. And I'd love to add some of those. 

Won't be hard. Look through the assortment tins at any dealer. Most here have one for foreign and one for tokens. You'll find big aluminum casino tokens, old transit tokens, and not a few sales tax tokens. Plastic ones are not rare. There's a guy in our club from Grants Pass (just north of the California line) who has trade tokens from so many dinky little Oregon towns (many of which are now ghost towns, in which OR is awash) that if there were such a thing as a Rajneesh token, he'd have one. (There weren't. But they did have a sort of credit card, and he does have one of those.) His stuff ought to be in the state museum someday.

Edited May 17, 2021 by JKK

[Hoghead515]

10 hours ago, JKK said:

Won't be hard. Look through the assortment tins at any dealer. Most here have one for foreign and one for tokens. You'll find big aluminum casino tokens, old transit tokens, and not a few sales tax tokens. Plastic ones are not rare. There's a guy in our club from Grants Pass (just north of the California line) who has trade tokens from so many dinky little Oregon towns (many of which are now ghost towns, in which OR is awash) that if there were such a thing as a Rajneesh token, he'd have done. (There weren't. But they did have a sort of credit card, and he does have one of those.) His stuff ought to be in the state museum someday.

That would be cool to look through. All the history.  I've been reading a little bit in some old Numismatic Magazines and they been telling the story behind a few of the old tokens. The old river ferry tokens are pretty cool too. 

[cladking]

http://www.taxtoken.org/

The Secret Service was the reason these tokens were phased out.  They said the tokens were being used as coins (legal tender) and competed with federal coinage.  

They are a great collectible except for two things.  First most are either exceedingly common or very rare and second is that high grade examples even of the common ones are scarce. 

 

There are very very few collectors so it's possible to pick up scarcities for next to nothing.  Yard sales in the places they were used will turn up one of these from time to time.  The ATTS used to be very helpful in helping members and. no doubt, still are.  It's a great resource in any case.  

[cladking]

Many tax token collectors also collect the red and bluepoint ration tokens from WW!!.  The connection is not apparent except they are often found with tax tokens.  

Some tax token collectors collect food stamp change tokens which were stopped for the same reason; they were being used as money.  I don't know where to find these any longer but a search should turn up 1000's of different tokens.  

 

Competing with fiat used to be a crime but now days it's apparently traded on the exchanges because it is "useful" to Congress.  

[Henri Charriere]

1 hour ago, cladking said:

Some tax token collectors collect food stamp change tokens which were stopped for the same reason; they were being used as money. 

Well, that explains why [some] local farmers market/green markets in NYC have a booth from which one can exchange food stamps allotted on their EBT cards to wooden tokens, usually in $1 and $5 denominations -- that are also clearly embossed: ELIGIBLE FOODS ONLY and NO CHANGE GIVEN. That is a mystery that has bedeviled me for years.

[Bob Flaminio]

I dig these little tokens. I wonder if NGC would ever slab them?

[Henri Charriere]

[In all my years, I don't recall ever seeing any formally encapsulated but Just Bob would likely know as he has dedicated a weekly thread to them -- "Token Tuesdays" and would be sure to know.]

[Oldhoopster]

On 5/17/2021 at 9:53 AM, cladking said:

Many tax token collectors also collect the red and bluepoint ration tokens from WW!!.  The connection is not apparent except they are often found with tax tokens.  

Some tax token collectors collect food stamp change tokens which were stopped for the same reason; they were being used as money.  I don't know where to find these any longer but a search should turn up 1000's of different tokens.  

 

Competing with fiat used to be a crime but now days it's apparently traded on the exchanges because it is "useful" to Congress.  

I remember seeing lots of MO tax tokens (metal and plastic) along the red and blue OPA tokens in dealer junk boxes in the 70s and 80s on the east coast.  Can't remember seeing many from the other states, but there always seemed to corroded MO tokens in the bottom of bin competing for space with the OPA disks (They seemed to be the roaches of the junk box world  )

[cladking]

32 minutes ago, Oldhoopster said:

I remember seeing lots of MO tax tokens (metal and plastic) along the red and blue OPA tokens in dealer junk boxes in the 70s and 80s on the east coast.  Can't remember seeing many from the other states, but there always seemed to corroded MO tokens in the bottom of bin competing for space with the OPA disks (They seemed to be the roaches of the junk box world  )

They certainly never got much respect.  A nice MO token (if there ever were any) could kick around in a junk box until it drew flies.  The red and bluepoint tokens can be found in Gem but are not common.  More accurately only a small percentage are pristine but there are so many of them that you can find most letter combinations in Gem.  Tax tokens are another matter and even nice BU's can be very elusive.  Some very common issues are hard to find in AU and good strikes are the exception for most tokens.  Except for WA I snap up any BU but have few even in my collection.  

Quote

I dig these little tokens. I wonder if NGC would ever slab them?

I think they will someday.  Right now there'd be little interest even if there were thousands of collectors instead of dozens. The economics is wrong because there are countless millions of these and most are worth the 4c wholesale price only as long as it's a nice mixture and not all garbage.  There are rarities but it's pretty unusual for one to trade at even $20.  There's no discernable premium for quality though, obviously, advanced collectors are seeking upgrades. 

But I would expect that in the next generation or two collectors are going to realize these really are US Coins and will at least want a few for type.  Some of these sets like IL make a marvelous and impressive collection by themselves.  Incidentally IL also has a very impressive set of telephone tokens that were used back between about 1919 and 1941.  These could be considered "coins" as well except they were issued by private companies rather than government (state).  

You can put together sets of about 50 sales tax tokens quite easily before additions start to get tougher.  Most of the tokens bought by the pound have about 45 different in several pounds.  

 

I've noticed in the last twenty years or so that very cheap tokens like high mintage transit, tax, and amusement tokens are getting harder and harder to find.  I actually disposed of a few gallons of amusement tokens a few years back because I couldn't give them away.  Good fors were common everywhere until they suddenly dried up and started selling for a couple dollars apiece back in the early '90's.  Coal tokens disappeared even sooner.  There are a lot of neat tokens out there and some just go begging and others are widely collected.  

I have to imagine there are lots of tax tokens being thrown away because of the high cost of postage.  Most will be corroded MO one mil tokens but there will be some good ones as well.  One pound of tax tokens is worth about about $10 and costs nearly as much to mail.  A pound of amusement tokens is worth about $3 if you can find a buyer.  Of course collections can bring much more and people do trade these tokens.  

Coin markets are funny and tokens even funnier.  

 

[Hoghead515]

I decided I'd like to have a few of these tokens so I got a small handful off Ebay. According to the description I'm supposed to get one of each of these. I chose these cause I wanted at least one from my home state. Kentucky. According to the description I'm supposed to get a couple. I'm very excited about it. Don't know if they will be the same shape as pictured but they were very cheap so I'll be happy with whatever. I bet it was alot of aggravation dealing with these back in the day. 

[Just Bob]

I would be happy to send a Mississippi example to add to your collection, if you want one. Just PM your address.

[Conder101]

On 5/20/2021 at 12:14 PM, Hoghead515 said:

I bet it was alot of aggravation dealing with these back in the day. 

Probably not as much as you might imagine.  They would have been handled as just another coin.  Only problem might have been the use of another slot in the till.

[Hoghead515]

Found some very special tokens on Ebay. They are from my hometown. One is from the brickyard where my papaw worked. And the other lot is 3 tokens from a store my other papaw owned. The same seller has them. I'm gonna try to buy them no matter the price I have to pay. These are the only ones I ever seen of the kind. I've searched after I seen them. I'm very excited about this auction. Got 4 more days left. I'll let you all know if I win them. 

[Lem E]

1 minute ago, Hoghead515 said:

Found some very special tokens on Ebay. They are from my hometown. One is from the brickyard where my papaw worked. And the other lot is 3 tokens from a store my other papaw owned. The same seller has them. I'm gonna try to buy them no matter the price I have to pay. These are the only ones I ever seen of the kind. I've searched after I seen them. I'm very excited about this auction. Got 4 more days left. I'll let you all know if I win them. 

Good luck my friend. Hope you get them.

[Hoghead515]

Just now, Lem E said:

Good luck my friend. Hope you get them.

Gonna try my best. They are worn but I will bid pretty high if I have to. Just because the significance of them. 

[Lem E]

1 minute ago, Hoghead515 said:

Gonna try my best. They are worn but I will bid pretty high if I have to. Just because the significance of them. 

That is very cool that they have some family history to them for you. Best of luck.

[Henri Charriere]

1 minute ago, Hoghead515 said:

Gonna try my best. They are worn but I will bid pretty high if I have to. Just because the significance of them. 

It's a relief to know there are others out there that are just like me.  Good luck!  👍

[Hoghead515]

This other is from my hometown also. Gonna try get it also. I know the building that business was in. Very cool stuff. Here's pics of all them. The store is in Grahn. 

[Hoghead515]

Very cool there's a token to a store that my family owned. I bout freaked out when I saw those. 

[Hoghead515]

My uncle has the old cash register out of it still. He was supposed to sell it to me and backed out. Its got the tag on it that says it was made for that store. He said he's gonna leave it to me in his will.