Contributed photos
Two sides of a Civil War token, and the envelope that connects it to New Haven ...
Dear W.C. Sanders, secretary of the New Haven Numismatic Society circa 1939, resident of 5 Harding Place, or maybe 608 Dixwell Ave.
The New Haven Independent historical research team has an important message for you from the future: We found your Civil War token.
Both the token and the envelope with your printed stamp on it came to our attention thanks to Robert Moffatt, a Massachusetts-based dealer in exonumia.
Exonumia! That’s quite a word. It refers to privately issued tokens and medals that look like federal coins, but are not.
But you know that already. You were into this stuff, too.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
Bob Moffatt grew up a banker’s son, so he started collecting coins as a young child. He went on to be a social worker and special ed teacher. The coin-collecting bug bit him, and he’s been at it for 40 years.
Like all dealers, Bob loves a coin or token that has a history. Where did it come from? Whose collection was it in? Who are the dealers who moved it from hand to hand?
Contributed photo
The Sanders coin's current owner Bob Moffatt (right) with the late great Steve Tanenbaum (left), who sold Bob this token.
He told me that tokens from the Civil War were privately minted in a kind of wild west fashion, because when the war broke out people began to horde the government-issued copper and silver coins.
In 1862 or 1863, people didn’t know how the war would turn out. They worried that paper money might become worthless. So they turned to coins, and their durable reusable precious metals.
As the war dragged on, there weren’t enough cents in circulation for common transactions like getting change when you bought a loaf of bread, which cost about one cent at the time. (Talk about inflation!) He said that taverns and bars and other businesses that had lots of transactions were some of the first to issue these tokens.
Which brings me to your token, W.C.
Bob said your copper coin is especially cool. We learned from your envelope that the token was minted by a commercial college in Albion, Michigan.
On one side, the coin identifies Ira Mayhew as the president of Albion Commercial College. The other side contains the words “The Cheapest And The Best” and, in a circle around the edge, “Mayhew’s Practical Keeping 1863.”
Bob told me that this token and others like it were used “as trade for a substitute of an Indian Head cent because cents had been hoarded during the Civil War, and merchants like the Commercial College needed something to give out for a cent’s change.”
Indian Head cents during the early 1860s were copper-nickel, “and thicker than our cents today,” he added. “So, a merchant could have some copper cent tokens made up for less than a cent each, and they could also use them as an advertising piece.”
How did this particular coin get to you in New Haven?
There were thousands of varieties and millions of tokens, and fairly widespread and well accepted. So I guess I’ve answered that question.
Bob thinks that this commercial college, which was trying to teach young people to be in business, might have been practicing what it preached. He told me that the tokens often were printed with the words “not one cent,” to distinguish them from official federal coins.
Your token, Bob told me, is rated an r‑3 these days on a rarity scale of ten, where ten’s the most unique and one’s the most common.
Ok, so this isn’t the rarest coin in the world.
But what Bob and I find even more intriguing than that little round of copper, and what connects this exonumia tale to New Haven is … well, you, W.C.! And the envelope you made for it.
Bob contacted us at the Independent and the New Haven Preservation Trust (NHPT) because you had the 608 Dixwell address on the envelope. The NHPT had the building listed in its register of historic places.
Did you live there as a residence or only do business there?
“When I saw the home [at 608 Dixwell in a historical photo],” Bob told me, “I said to myself: I bet he runs a little business out of his residence.”
He said he sent a picture of the token to the NHPT in the hope they might add to their file the fact that you, a coin dealer, lived there.
When we checked out the NHPT’s file, it said that the house was built in 1898 by and for a physician, Dr. Bernard Henrahan.
But no other residents in the building are cited on the historical inventory form for 608. No coin or token dealer for sure.
Maybe you’ll be added as someone who lived or worked there. Makes things more interesting. More of a human touch. Not just for the story behind that property, but the story behind your coin.
I don’t know much about coins myself, although I used to like making penny rolls and taking them to the bank when I was a kid. I was vaguely looking for something rare but never found it. But I always had a sense that coins and tokens were cool, very human objects, because they’ve passed through so many different hands.
Bob acquired your token from Steve Tanenbaum.
There’s a sad story there.
Tanenbaum was a good friend of Bob’s through the trade, and had become a major dealer in Civil War tokens in the country. Steve was killed in a motor vehicle chase of a murder suspect in New York City back in 2011.
I don’t know quite why I’m telling you all this except Bob feels closer to what he calls the pedigree or the story of the token, knowing it passed through not only Steve’s hands, but yours before that.
When I talked to him, he knew nothing about you except the 608 Dixwell address, and so I filled him in on what our friends — Sarah Tisdale at the NHPT, Allison Botelho at the New Haven Free Public Library’s local history collection, and Jason Bischoff-Wurstle at the New Haven Museum — helped me find about you.
Bob was impressed how you turned up in our city directories that we have in the library as the secretary of the New Haven Numismatic Society in 1939.
The group, per issues of their magazine, The Numismatist, met in room number 4 at 18 College St.
Their magazine said that if you want more info about the club, you can contact Mr. Sanders. (That’s you!) Your address, at least as of December 1939, was listed as 5 Harding Place.
That’s not on Dixwell Avenue… but it’s close. A city director of 1949 then lists a William Sanders at that same Harding Place address a decade later.
If that Sanders of The Numismatist and of the New Haven Numismatic Society and of 5 Harding Place is you, then I’ve found an even more intriguing detail about you. The city directory lists your profession not as a coin dealer … but as a linoleum layer.
Well, novelist that I am, I have a bit of a wild imagination. So when I read that, a light went off, the proverbial bulb above my head: Mr. W.C. Sanders loves coins and tokens, but to pay the bills he works on linoleum.
But then, again, maybe it worked the other way around: Maybe it was the linoleum that led you to the coins and tokens?
Because I began to imagine you at that linoleum trade in a house where decades before, let’s say, in the Victorian period or even during the Civil War itself, there’s a scene like this playing out:
A suitor in the parlor. Now the fellow drops down on his knee to propose and, voila, out of his pocket rolls a coin or token. He’s busy proposing so of course the groom doesn’t notice the lost change. Or there’s probably a five-inch-thick rug and so the token in question gets lost in the thick pile or rolls into the corner, or maybe settles behind the massive credenza. And that token lies there for 30 or 40 or 50 years until the house changes residents. The new owners want to upgrade the furnishings and old rugs and replace them with new fangled linoleum.
So along comes W. C. Sanders, the linoleum layer (and part-time coin dealer extraordinaire). And there you discover the coin. You put it in an envelope, label it with your Dixwell Avenue business address, and almost several decades more later, it ends up in the hands of Bob Moffatt …
Oh well.
When I conveyed this to Bob he was delighted to learn anything about you, real or imagined.
When he sells the token he says it will now be marked with the history of the dealers who have handled it, with your name added:
Sanders/Tanenbaum/Moffatt.
That adds mystique and value. Bob said your r‑3 token may sell for $100, with the envelope.
Bob says, however, he is not in a rush to sell. Your token now has a rich story, and he feels like holding on to it.
While your token might not make Mr. Moffatt tremendously wealthy, the story behind it, your story such as we know it, has enriched this reporter’s understanding of New Haven numismatic history.
Which I guess brings me to why I’m writing this letter in the first place.
Really, it’s just to say thank you.
Sincerely,
Allan Appel, New Haven Independent exonumia correspondent
Coin markings translated, per Bob Moffatt: "Mich 25-A-1a is the Fuld catalog number. 25 stands for Albion, Michigan. A means it is the first token. The 1a is the variety, and the small 'a' means it is copper (some tokens had more than one variety so there may be a '2a' token). "The Ira Mathew in red was the president of the college. Albion Commercial College was the name of the institute. “27” was an old price. “R3” as I explained was the rarity of the token (R1 being common, R10 being unique). ...
... "On the reverse side, the '800' in the box was the collection where Steve [Tanenbaum] purchased this token. The MSBX is my code for what I paid for the token. The LAD at the bottom was Steve’s code for what he paid. The BAS was his code for the asking price for the token."