The Swiss Bar token found in San Francisco

[mr_larry]

I was in Golden Gate Park today and for some reason it was all about tokens.

The first token I pulled was from a gopher pile that had spilled onto the sidewalk. It was one of those telephone tokens by Moises.
I moved to another location in GGP and I found a really cool token in great shape in sandy soil.

It says:
The Swiss Bar
S.E. Cor. (southeast corner)
-Of-
California
& 6th Ave.

Reverse:
Good for 5 (cents) in trade

There is an intersection in San Francisco not far from where I found the token that fits the location. However initial internet research has come up empty for a Swiss Bar having been located here.

Any info would be greatly appreciated!

 

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[idahotokens]

Nice find! I'd bet that this is indeed from San Francisco, but it is not listed in either of the Kappen CA Token Books. How about posting it on TokenCatalog.com to see if some of the California researchers can prove it? Or, with your permission, I could post it.
John in the Great 208

 

[mr_larry]

Nice find! I'd bet that this is indeed from San Francisco, but it is not listed in either of the Kappen CA Token Books. How about posting it on TokenCatalog.com to see if some of the California researchers can prove it? Or, with your permission, I could post it.
John in the Great 208

John, I don't know how to post something on the site, so if you would like to do it for me that would be great! Please post a link back here to the post!
Thank you!

 

[vpnavy]

Nice find mr_larry.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Larry,

There's a lot of tokens that just simply never got/get listed in any guide books. I used to think that the way collector guide books (like Kappens works, for instance) got made/compiled from mintage records of the various companies that actually made them. I mean, it stands to reason that they would have records of the ones they made for the various proprietors over the years, right? And there's only a handful of coin-makers that made such things, right? But nnneeeooohhh. It turns out that records don't exist (or weren't kept, etc...). Companies folded and records weren't kept of such minutia. So ironically, the way guide-books have been made, is not from any such "records" of their manufacture, .... but rather: from examples known, found, etc....

Therefore, it's entirely possible that new tokens surface all the time, that aren't in any books.

And while you might *think* that makes them "rare" (since examples prior to that are presumably un-known), yet it doesn't work like that. Any new token that surfaces draws its value from "like-examples". So for example: yours, if we deduce that it's from SF, is going to make it less valuable (from a value/collector standpoint). Reason? Because there's THOUSANDS of tokens attributed to SF, meaning no shortage of examples anyone can avail themselves of. Contrast that to a 1-horse town (where a single token has ever been known to come from), and values go up (because a collector's odds at getting a token from that town, are slim). Then there's factors like drink tokens fetch more, but again, based on city-size.

Anyhow, congrat's on the token find. Staggering to think of the sheer quantities of silver and old coins and tokens that have come out of GGP over the years. But it's so big, and so junky, that a person could never exhaust the signals from that place.

 

[mr_larry]

Tom,
Thanks for the insights! What is interesting is that I looked up the Swiss Bar in all of the old phone directories in SF and I could not find them listed in any of them. It makes me wonder if the token came from another town. I looked up some of the major cities like Sacramento, Oakland, Napa and more, and none of them have the cross streets listed.

It makes me wonder if the bar was only open for a very short time because maybe they opened right before prohibition went into effect or something else happened like the place burned down right after opening. So far I have not been able to find a single reference anywhere to The Swiss Bar.