🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Token info needed

[ironhorse]

Hey hey diggers!
I found this token the other day and by looking at it you might think it is a slam dunk to identify . Is it me or does the internet just hate me today? I tried googling around with this one but just couldn't get the facts.

It's one of the typical swastika good luck tokens popular from the early 1900s up to before WWll...32mm and made of copper alloy.

Any help appreciated
What did I miss?

 

[ironhorse]

Oh...script on the reverse says
Membership Emblem of the Dont Worry Club

 

[Centsless Detecting]

Try thetokencatalog.com there Ironhorse. Found some info for ya there. Love me an old token.

 

[ironhorse]

Thanks CD
I always forget about that site, I guess I need more reasons to remember it lol
Thanks

 

[Centsless Detecting]

Thanks CD
I always forget about that site, I guess I need more reasons to remember it lol
Thanks

Any time IH. Glad to have helped. Good luck out there!

 

[ironhorse]

I think it's great to have found a catalogue listing for the token but when searching for the Hotel Olympia itself is where I hit a roadblock..I cant find much on the hotel
Have to keep on looking

 

[Centsless Detecting]

Yeah thats odd considering you have a name and an address to the place. Did you Google street view the address yet?

 

[Centsless Detecting]

After a quick Google address search. Appears the original building is probably long gone. But maybe this address is different from the one on the token.

 

[robertk]

Google is confused -- that listing doesn't match that address. (That description is for 310 Washington street, not 1729 Washington Street. It probably thinks it matches because it happens to reference the year 1729).

 

[Centsless Detecting]

Google is confused -- that listing doesn't match that address. (That description is for 310 Washington street, not 1729 Washington Street. It probably thinks it matches because it happens to reference the year 1729).

Ah yes I can see that now. The street view is correct probably, just not that description.

 

[Red-Coat]

Good token.

The Hotel Olympia was a purpose-built Victorian-style building constructed around 1890 at what was then 1729 Washington St, Boston, MA, on what was once part of the Main Street/Capitol Way area. I can’t find a record of when it ceased business but the area, often referred to as the ‘New York Streets’ neighbourhood, was cleared during the 1950s and early 1960s as part of a massive series of urban renewal projects to make way for new commercial development, including the modern Ink Block complex and associated luxury apartments. Many historic hotels and tenements were demolished and the street layout re-mapped.

The ‘Don’t Worry Movement’ was founded around 1897 by the musician and author Theodore Frelinghuysen Seward (1835 – 1902), who was also founder of the Brotherhood of Christian Unity and a number of other associations.

The movement promoted spiritual peace, optimistic philosophy and the reduction of anxiety, but was more of a cultural fad than an actual organisation with formal members. It spawned hundreds of unrelated ‘memberless’ groups, the issuance of novelty tokens, and featured widely in newspaper humour of the day. The ‘Don’t Worry Club’ concept was further promoted by the novelist, newspaper and magazine editor Edgar Watson Howe (1853 - 1937) with proclamations to overcome the habit of worrying and promote a lighthearted, "smiling" approach to life published in 1901-1902 in the Atchison Daily Globe (a newspaper that he had established in Kansas).

The use of a swastika as a good luck symbol fizzled out in the 1930s when Nazi Germany adopted it as an emblem, with horseshoes and four-leaf clovers gaining more popularity.

 

[ironhorse]

@ Redcoat
I knew you would come through in the end lol
The hotel is very vague with information about the establishment. I put on my tinfoil hat and settled for a supressed story about it. Realistically it just wasnt that popular and didnt stand out greatly I suppose.
The Dont Worry Club also has a colourful past that was very easy to find as was history of the good luck tokens of the early 20th century ,lots of examples to study.
Thanks for filling in some blanks on my latest find

 

[jeff of pa]

oldest​

​

Boston Evening Transcript​

Thu, Jul 21, 1898 ·Page 5

 

[jeff of pa]

Final Mention With that Address Added​

​

Boston Evening Globe​

Fri, Aug 16, 1918 ·Page 9

 

[ironhorse]

@jeffPa
I guess that's why they had some tokens made advertising their hotel, they needed all the help they could get. Clearly they weren't getting a whole lot of traction in the socials of the day( newspapers)
It does give a timeline and that's what counts..thanks