Diggin Dude
Silver Member
So, back on June 7th I recovered my first Gold coin, the 1910 $5 Indian that I posted. In that post I also mentioned "I found a subway token, I guess". Well all this time went by and I forgot I had the token until last night I rediscovered it on a self in my home and the information is interesting.Apparently it is a Subway Token from 1928 that was never put in circulation. Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) one of the original subway lines that went into service in 1904 in New York City. These tokens were produced in 1928 to be used to pay a fare of 7-cents, raised from 5-cents but the fare raise fell through and the tokens were sent to be destroyed.
Below I'm pasting the information I found out about it:
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company and the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit Company were operating under the Dual Contracts for about ten years before trouble entered the picture. This was in two areas: they could not raise the fare above 5-cents, and that construction costs were rising much faster than those projected in 1913. The BRT went into receivership in the early 1920 after the disastrous Malbone Street accident (the street was later renamed Empire Boulevard). It was re-organized as the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company. The IRT forecasting bad things, in 1927 petitioned to the Public Service Commission for a hike to a 7-cent fare. The PSC denied it, but in appeal to the State Supreme Court, it was overturned. After oral arguments to the U.S. Supreme Court in October 1928 things looked good for a hike in the fare, so the IRT ordered two million tokens from each of three companies: Johnson Fare Box, Scoville Manufacturing, and Meyer & Wenth. These six million tokens were in the vaults of the IRT by December of 1928. However, after re-hearing the case, the Supreme Court ruled that the 5-cent fare must stay, the tokens went into storage, and in time the companies went into receivership. The tokens remained in the vaults of the Board of Transportation until 1943 when a large sum were sold to the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company for the metal use in their own token of the era, and the remaining stock was sold in 1948 for scrap. In an oft-repeated oral folklore story that when the twenty year old bags were being moved out of storage, one broke spilling the contents on the floor, and needless to say, not all of the tokens found their way back into the replacement bag.
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