Token

[surewinwilliams]

Newbie huntress here. Found our first token today in historic st Charles behind our office. Totally sTOKEd!

 

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[plymouthian12]

cool find i love getting tokens

 

[feidzd]

so cute!

 

[Mackaydon]

Welcome to Treasure Net !
Interesting find.
State of Illinois 1-1/2 cent Token in "Lusterous Mint" condision. | eBay

 

[icanfindem]

Good token. Keep it up.

 

[jewelerguy]

nice token. welcome to the forum

 

[cudamark]

Cool tax token. I love the square shape.

 

[CRUSADER]

Welcome to Treasure Net !
Interesting find.
State of Illinois 1-1/2 cent Token in "Lusterous Mint" condision. | eBay

Dept. of Finance? So this is a Tax Token?

Can you explain how these worked, we never had Tax Tokens in the UK (as far as I know)

 

[curbdiggercarl57]

Tokens are good, good token!
Carl

 

[CMDiamonddawg]

that is a nice find . I like seeing those old tax tokens . I hate the fact that we're, paying out the old wazoo, every freakin' tax , known to man , since the 1700's here's one for you 19 for me.. sorry been listening to taxman by SRV .. i like the Beatles original version as well

 

[xr7ator]

Welcome to a great hobby and website and cool tax token. We have two metal types here in Colorado. Both aluminum. One is square like this one with a small round hole in the middle. The other is round with a small red cross shaped cross hole in the middle. I found the round type yesterday..not to good a shape.

Time to hit the curbs for me today. HH all

 

[idahotokens]

Crusader--Sales taxes (somewhat like your Value Added taxes) are assessed by individual states and some localities. Not all states had or have sales tax. They are based on a percentage of the price of items sold. In the 1930s when they were first instituted, the concept of bracketing (i.e. 1-10¢ no tax, 11-20¢ was 1¢ tax, 21-30¢ was 2¢ tax, etc.) the amount had not been thought of, and tax was to be collected a strict percentage. Today, for instance, a sale of from 1 to 10¢ might not require any tax to be paid, depending on the bracket. Then, however, a tax of ¼¢ might have been assessed for a 10¢ purchase. The tokens were used so the merchant could make exact change. Illinois tax tokens were made in three varieties, all 1½ mill denomination (0.15¢ = $0.0015). Local municipalities made other denominations. The one found is listed in Schimmel's U. S. State-Issued Sales Tax Tokens as IL-3. There are two round varieties listed as IL-1 & IL-2. According to Schimmel, IL-3 was introduced ca. 1935-36 and was officially considered to be in use until 1947.
John in the Great 208

 

[Mackaydon]

Adding to John's comment:
Back in the day, merchants had to pay sales tax to the state on the total amount of sales made by the merchant during each day’s sales. You can imagine that if the sales tax rate is 3% and a child buys a 10c piece of candy there is no way to collect the three-tenths of one cent. If you rounded down that meant that the merchant could not collect anything for the tax. If you rounded up the state was gaining 7 tenths of a cent on every 10 cent sale. You can see that if the merchant sold 100 pieces of candy he was losing 30 cents a day in tax revenues to the state, so the token was born. This allowed the merchant to take 11 cents for the first piece of candy and give change back in mills. The next time you wanted to buy a 10c candy you could present the merchant with the 10c and a token and complete the transaction. This allowed the merchant to collect the sales tax on each transaction.
A mill is a tenth of a cent. As you can imagine, people did not like having to carry a second set of coins, and to further complicate matters, different states issued different tax tokens. 1 and 5 mills are the most common denominations, but other denominations include: 1/5 cent, 1 1/2 mills, and "Tax on 10c or less."

Most coin dealers have no idea what to charge for these tokens, Many tax tokens are quite common, and can often be found in coin dealer "junk boxes" for as little as 10 cents. Others tokens are known to be much scarcer, however they too sometimes show up in ‘junk boxes’ from time to time.

In addition to tokens many towns printed sales tax "tickets" or scrip (sometimes spelled script) printed on paper or cardboard stock, usually on vibrant colors or security patterns. State sales tax token composition varied: copper, brass, paper, cardboard, fiber, aluminum, zinc, plastic and even wood was used.

Don…

 

[CRUSADER]

OK Cheers

 

[surewinwilliams]

Thanks for all of the encouragement and info!