November 21st, 2007
Endangered Durham: Transit Tokens
When I started this blog three years ago, I enjoyed posting about my paper money collection – especially the Civil War stuff from North Carolina. I blame all of this on my maternal grandfather, Lebe Monago – who not only got me into paper money, but also into coins, stamps and tokens.
Some of my earliest memories of Grandpa were sitting at his big kitchen table in Lewis Run, Pennsylvania, sorting out piles of stamps. My favorite stamps in the world are still the United States Postage Due stamps from the 1930’s, because they’re the first ones I remember sorting out. I still have every single one he gave to me.
But Postage Due stamps aren’t the point of this post. A few weeks ago, Gary at Endangered Durham posted about some Durham Transit Tokens a friend found in his Durham backyard.
Immediately enthralled by the idea of locally minted tokens, I set out to find a few of these precious metal slivers and got lucky; a dealer in Oklahoma had a few squirreled away that he was willing to part with. (for the record, we’re not talking big bucks here; the two tokens and shipping lightened me by about $9)
Their arrival in yesterday’s mail cheered my numismatic tendencies, and I’m especially pleased that these tokens are now back in Durham. How they ended up in Oklahoma is anyone’s guess.