By Barry Krause
Love tokens are circulating coins that have been smoothed off, usually on one side, and then engraved with initials, names, dates, quotations or other artwork to be given as personal gifts to express affection.
The fad for love tokens in America began after the Civil War and continued until the early 20th century. Most love tokens were made on silver coins because silver was softer than copper cents or nickel 5 cent pieces, and was therefore easier to carve into a sentimental design.
Some love tokens were obviously carved by amateurs such as sailors on long voyages or soldiers at war who spent their idle hours in patiently etching love tokens to give to their sweethearts when they returned home.
Many love tokens display intertwined letters, perhaps the initials of the names of the giver or receiver, or sometimes both of their initials at once. Collectors today delight in finding old love tokens with initials identical to their own or family members, and will pay a premium price to obtain such a lucky chance encounter with a truly unique (one-of-a-kind) memento whose long ago artist used the same initials by coincidence.
Other love tokens show the full names of some person, usually first names such as “Sadie” or “Mary,” and we most often find female names, indicating that the love token craze probably consisted of males giving them to females for the most part, but some show male names, which could mean the name of the giver.
It is believed that many women “collected” love tokens from as many men as possible, boyfriends or otherwise, as an entertaining hobby, much as modern women enjoy receiving any kind of jewelry from male admirers, and the more the better!
Indeed, love tokens are typically drilled with holes or have a loop soldered on to serve as suspension on a necklace, bracelet, earrings, brooches and so forth for women, and for decoration on cufflinks, stickpins or watch fobs for men.
Many jewelers specialized in custom engraving of love tokens, either with machine work or hand-done, per the customer’s request and budget. Engravers had booths at the Columbian World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 to make love tokens out of coins for visitors at the fairgrounds.
Because the average salary for day laborers in America during the last quarter of the 19th century was only a dollar or a dollar-and-a-half a day, poor people could afford to give love tokens only of the small denomination silver coins. It is estimated that more than half of the love tokens made in 19th century America were done on silver dimes because dime love tokens from that time period are most often found today.
Half dollars and dollars are much rarer and gold love tokens are extremely scarce, and most of those were made with gold dollar coins in America, each representing a substantial amount of money then, maybe a full day’s take home pay for the token giver, but I think that many gold love tokens were created for customers wealthy enough to devote their cash to them.
I show here four gold love tokens that I once owned. Three are on 19th century American gold dollars, and the fourth is on an 1877 Prussian 5 Mark coin. Except for the holes or soldered loop, one side of each token is unaltered so that we can positively identify the coins, but two of the U.S. gold dollars have had their date side smoothed off, so we can’t tell their exact date of mintage.
Conveniently, the 1877 Prussian 5 Mark coin was only made that year for that design type, so, even though its date side was shaved off to make space for the love token work, we know for a fact that the coin is an 1877 piece.
Of course, the love token work could have been done at any time after the coin entered circulation as legal money, but many love tokens were deliberately chosen with specific dates already on the coins as minted, such as birth years, wedding anniversaries or other dates of special meaning to the people involved.
If a love token can be dated, then we know for sure that it could not have been engraved before that year. Even when the year itself is part of the engraved work, we assume that it was the current year when the token was given as a gift, or a previous year of significance to the two people involved.
There is always a remote possibility that .an engraved love token year was a future date, such as “1904” done the year before and presented as a gift to a person along with a written or spoken message of “meet me at the fair” to symbolize a get-together at the coming Saint Louis World’s Fair the next year, 1904.
In any case, it doesn’t detract from the beauty and desirability of the love token, whether or not we can figure when or why a specific love token was created, but I believe that the four gold love tokens shown here were engraved long ago, probably 19th century, because of their ornately done lettering in style then.
It may be hard to see in my photograph of the love token engravings, but, from left to right, the intertwined letters on the four coins are “FEC” / “TC” / “AEL” / “EL” with the “EL” on the Prussian coin in fancy raised letters on a shallow relief design flourish plus rim work and a gold loop attached at top. This love token has a test cut at bottom which doesn’t hurt its collector value.
So, what are these things worth? Not nearly as much as their undamaged coins would be worth to most collectors, even though genuine old gold love tokens are rare. That’s because there are probably thousands of collectors of normal unaltered coins for every serious collector of love tokens. It’s just a matter of supply and demand.
I once owned these four antique gold love tokens. I bought them one at a time with the intention of someday assembling a large collection of gold love tokens that would look wonderful as a traveling exhibit at numismatic shows and conventions everywhere, plus have possible great resale value when I decided to sell them.
As the price of gold bullion skyrocketed, the cost of buying more gold love tokens increased proportionately, and I got discouraged and sold the four examples that I had to get a little spending money for something more conventional.
Ah, if only we could go back in time and correct all of our collecting mistakes, what fantastic collections all of us would now have!
But it is precisely those errors and wild goose chases that are part of our training as temporarily wounded, but increasingly wiser, collectors that we keep becoming. I learn from every object that I once owned as a collectible, and that knowledge remains when the only other thing I have left is a photograph of it.
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