This was a yard sale find with a huge group of tokens that included some civil war tokens, merchant tokens, so-called dollars, foreign coins, etc. It is a paper or cardboard material. What is it? The other side is blank.
It is just another form of merchant trade token. Simon/Silas Mead probably found that he could have his local newspaper make these cheaper than sending off for metal ones. The only problem is that they didn't last as long, but perhaps that didn't bother him. The problem will be in finding out where and when Mead was in business. These type of chits were used for many years so it will be tough to date it any closer than about 1850-1950. It sounds like the group it was with once belonged to a collector, so his location may not be close to where you obtained it. Why not post it on www.tokencatalog.com and see if someone can help identify it?
John in ID