Currency Tokens
In their purest form, currency tokens issued by a company crossed the boundary of merely being "trade" tokens when they were sanctioned by the local government authority. This was sometimes a measure resulting from a severe shortage of money or the government's inability to issue its own coinage. In effect, the organization behind the tokens became the regional bank.
A classic example of this is the Strachan and Co trade tokens of East Griqualand in South Africa which were used as currency by the indigenous people in the region for nearly sixty years. Their initial success resulted from the scarcity of small change in this remote region in the 1800s.
Similarly, in times of high inflation, tokens have sometimes taken on a currency role. An example of this is Italian or Israeli telephone tokens, which were always good for the same service (i.e., one phone call) even as prices increased. New York City subway tokens were also accepted sometimes in trade, or even in parking meters, since they had a set value.
Read more about this topic: Token Coin
Famous quotes containing the words currency and/or tokens:
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is the part of men to fear and tremble
When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)