The “Aim High Accident Health Life” piece is colloquially known as a “pocket motivator”. It was produced by the Combined Insurance Company of Chicago Illinois, founded in 1919 by W. Clement Stone. By 1930, he had more than a thousand agents selling insurance across the United States and ultimately merged with Ryan Insurance to form the multinational Aon Corporation, headquartered in London, England.
The portrait on the obverse is Stone himself. In addition to selling insurance, he was a philanthropist and wrote several books about how to succeed in life – notably “Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude”. The “PMA” stamped on his portrait stands for “Positive Mental Attitude”. These pieces come in various “denominations”, of which the largest was $1,000 and were presented to sales agents in recognition of how much new revenue they had created for the business from accident and health-cover policies. Although undated, I believe they’re all post-WWII and were still being awarded to employees as late as the 1990’s.
Don........
