Rare Token? Help token Buffs

[Seener53]

Ok I posted this token a few months back but nobody was able to tell me anything on value or desirability. I dug up the token in Chicago at a 150 year old park and it was about 8-10" deep. As far as I know there are no known examples in the data base of the 10$ variety but there is a known 5$ specimen. I'm just curious if this is something desirable or valuable and its
age as I know squat about tokens.

Scrip says: The Rapid Sales Co. Denver Colorado 10**$ with an Indian head penny style wreath, back has a fancy RS.

 

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[fishstick]

Wish I could help but that is a SWEET lookin token and I'd be willin to say that any token collector wood want it for sure.. CONGRATS.. HH

 

[idahotokens]

Pritchard's Colorado tokens book lists $2.50, $5, $10, & $20 denominations of this token. Yours is his catalog number DE6130-1000. All four denominations are on tokencatalog.com - it is just that nobody has yet posted a photo of the $10 one - I'd encourage you to do so with yours.

The 1916 Denver, CO City Directory shows the Rapid Sales Co. as "merchandise brokers" - #315 Knickerbocker Building. A possible clue to the nature of their business and how your piece came to be in Chicago is a listing in the 1906 Annual Report of the Illinois Bureau of Factory Inspection showing the Rapid Sales Co., 175 Dearborn St. in Chicago, as in the "stock reducing" business. Also this ad in a 1905 trade journal called "Mens Wear". From this, I'd speculate that when a retail business went bankrupt, the receivers might hire the Rapid Sales Co. to come in and inventory the stock (using these tokens as "counters" to keep track of the value of goods. The inventory people might walk down an aisle of clothing, say, with some sort of token dispenser (like the old change-makers bus drivers used to have on their belt) and when they would appraise a rack of shirts at $10, they would put a $10 token in a cup located at the end of the aisle. Then after the whole store had been inventoried, somebody would tote up the tokens in all the cups and that would be the offer from the liquidator (Rapid Sales) to the receiver. If there was a question about the total, the amount per row could be checked rather than having to go through the whole store. Or, there might have been cups placed on smaller units, like a shelf, rather than a whole row. At any rate, the tokens were used as counters.

John in the Great 208

 

[Seener53]

Pritchard's Colorado tokens book lists $2.50, $5, $10, & $20 denominations of this token. Yours is his catalog number DE6130-1000. All four denominations are on tokencatalog.com - it is just that nobody has yet posted a photo of the $10 one - I'd encourage you to do so with yours.

The 1916 Denver, CO City Directory shows the Rapid Sales Co. as "merchandise brokers" - #315 Knickerbocker Building. A possible clue to the nature of their business and how your piece came to be in Chicago is a listing in the 1906 Annual Report of the Illinois Bureau of Factory Inspection showing the Rapid Sales Co., 175 Dearborn St. in Chicago, as in the "stock reducing" business. Also this ad in a 1905 trade journal called "Mens Wear". From this, I'd speculate that when a retail business went bankrupt, the receivers might hire the Rapid Sales Co. to come in and inventory the stock (using these tokens as "counters" to keep track of the value of goods. The inventory people might walk down an aisle of clothing, say, with some sort of token dispenser (like the old change-makers bus drivers used to have on their belt) and when they would appraise a rack of shirts at $10, they would put a $10 token in a cup located at the end of the aisle. Then after the whole store had been inventoried, somebody would tote up the tokens in all the cups and that would be the offer from the liquidator (Rapid Sales) to the receiver. If there was a question about the total, the amount per row could be checked rather than having to go through the whole store. Or, there might have been cups placed on smaller units, like a shelf, rather than a whole row. At any rate, the tokens were used as counters.

John in the Great 208

Oh wow! Thank you John for all your research and knowledge
So is it worth anything

 

[idahotokens]

The $2.50 one in Pritchard's CO book is shown as $4-$8, but that is the only one of them with a price range shown. I'd not think yours would bring over $25, but that is only a guess coming from someone not familiar at all with the Colorado token market. The only way to find out for sure would be to auction it, and today the only real game in town for that is ePay.
John in the Great 208

 

[Seener53]

Thanks again John, thought I had something valuable Oh well back to digging lol!