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Civil War Tokens!
During the Civil War, a shortage of coins developed in the north and east, as people hoarded hard currency, in fear of inflation.
As a result, merchants found it difficult to make change for their customers.
Some issued their own currency or trade tokens, which customers were willing to accept, based on their confidence in the merchant's ability to redeem them in the future.
From 1861 to 1864, about 50 million tokens with thousands of different designs were made. Many had "not" written above the words "one cent" to distinguish them from real coins. Still considered Exonumia, there are two major types of Civil War tokens, Patriotics and Store Cards.
Patriotic Civil War Tokens carry no advertising and have patriotic phrases such as:
Union For Ever
The Union Must and Shall be Preserved
Our Country
Army and Navy
Civil War Store Card Tokens usually have the city and state on the token. Plus a merchants name or his business name and were usually a trade token in a sense. Civil War tokens were issued in large numbers from the following states:
