Conder tokens, also known as 18th-century provincial tokens, were a form of privately minted token coinage struck and used during the latter part of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century (1790s-1805) in England, Anglesey and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

The driving force behind the need for token coinage was the shortage of small denomination coins for everyday transactions. However, the demand was fueled by other factors such as the Industrial Revolution, population growth, and the preponderance of counterfeit circulating coins. Because the government made little effort to ameliorate this shortage, private business owners and merchants took matters into their own hands, and the first tokens of this type were issued in 1787 to pay workers at the Parys Mine Company. By 1795, millions of tokens of a few thousand varying designs had been struck and were in common use throughout Great Britain.

Collecting Conder tokens has been popular since shortly after they were first manufactured, resulting in the availability today of many high-grade examples for collectors. The demarcation of what is or is not considered a Conder token is somewhat unclear; however, most collectors consider Conder tokens to include those indexed originally by James Conder or later by Dalton & Hamer.

Is this about coins? I don’t collect coins.
I will save for another day my take on the boredom of today’s collectibles dealers. I travel to quite a few different types of collectibles shows throughout each year and talk to both dealers and collectors at length. Boy, if you want to get into some heated talks, come with me.

In short, I have found a show like the National, one the largest sports card and memorabilia shows in the country, to be filled to the brim with sports cards that have been marketed and played out for decades. I think the dealers have become bored. Walking the convention floors seem more like an exchange these days. Afterall, all it takes is a checkbook to pick up several Michael Jordan 1986 Fleer rookie cards. There are 25,000 of them and more than 300 in PSA 10. And $500,000 to boot. Table after table, it seemed like just a reel of the same cards. However, to my eye, the sands began to shift a few short years ago. A few years ago, it was rare to see many non-sports cards at the show, and now non-sports are fully interlaced within the sports cards, and some dealers are strictly non-sports. It began slowly, but it is solid now. I have noticed a few dealers, exclusive non-sports, with high-grade cards, having their tables swamped the entire show with both spectators and buyers. Many buying their first non-sports.

It is the same story with coins, and along the same timeline.
Walk the FUN Coin Shows and you will see the same inventories over and over. Considering these shows are normally 1500 dealer tables, that’s a lot.
A few years ago, it would have been rare to find a civil war token, a Robbins Medal, a Conder token. If a dealer had any of these, they were relegated to the back of his table in a box. However, nowadays, dealers have really expanded. They still carry predominantly U.S. coinage, but World coins, ancient coins, tokens and medals, have gotten traction. Collectors are asking, what are those? And the clubs, the publications and the Internet have all the information available about them.

And now, back to Conder Tokens.
There is a difference between Conder tokens and just about any other coin. Think about any coin. They are pretty much the same. A bust portrait of a leader, a family crest, a country logo, an event. Nothing controversial.
The universe of about 5,000 Conder tokens contains many controversial pieces. Many.

This was the 1790s. Great Britain and France were in-the-midst of revolutionary atmospheres. France’s king and his cabinet had their heads cut-off and put on spikes outside the government buildings for people to see. Guess who had a hand in the support of the French revolutionaries. Thomas Paine, a founding father of the American revolution. The governments of France and Britain did not care for him. He was a feared man. He wanted equal rights, land ownership, and freedom for all.

Although Great Britain wasn’t overthrown, the British government tried and jailed many revolutionaries, including Paine. I believe that Ben Franklin had, at one point, traveled to Great Britain to free him and bring him back to the U.S.

What these privately minted, and at times anonymously minted tokens displayed were the feelings of the people during the time. Free speech would land you in jail. So these clever little tokens would air many frustrations, while also providing a means of small change so commerce could operate smoothly.
5,000 tokens are too much for me to consider collecting. There are numerous topics that fit back into the boring category, like landscapes, city names, churches and other historic buildings. I’m not saying they are not nice, just not for me.

A subgroup collection of Political tokens and others of odd and different topics would number less than 200. Very doable.

The Kicker
1790’s copper coins and tokens from the U.S. in higher grades today can cost you in the tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
While Conder tokens from the 1790’s can be found in mint state and spectacular conditions and normally range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. And the kicker you ask, is that the population for these gems is ridiculously low. Sometimes only 3 to 5 coins have been graded. Are you kidding me? What's the old saying, "like shooting fish in a barrel".

(NGC) Numismatic Guaranty Corp and (PCGS) Professional Coin Grading Service grade these, and I recommend that most collectors buy tokens that they have graded. The assigned grades are always debatable, but they are good at saving you from problem coins that have been cleaned heavily, environmentally degraded or played with to deceive. And guarantee that they are authentic. It takes the guess work out of the game so I can concentrate on the token. I don’t want to become a grading expert.
Here are a few Political Conder tokens to whet your appetite.
 
There are about 30 varieties of Thomas Paine tokens, with him and/or of him and two other revolutionaries, hanging from a gibbet. Legends usually read “The End of Pain”. Notice they dropped the “e” from the end of his name so as not to get in trouble. Another legend reads “The Wrongs of Man”, referring to Paine’s book “The rights of Man”.

Another favorite variety are Dogs and Cats. The Dogs read “Much Gratitude Brings Servitude”, meaning that you will pay dearly for what you are given. The Cats read “I Among Slaves Enjoy my Freedom”, referring from the inability to train a cat. They are free and do what they want. There are many die-pairings of Dogs and Cats, but among the rarest and most favorite is this one which pair both on one token.

Then there are a several historic figures that are more than interesting, like Lady Godiva riding nude on horseback, Adam & Eve in the garden, several mythical figures, a bit of racism, and a world of animals.

The 1932 US Caramel set is a 31 card set featuring every President from George Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The cards came in 3 different colors: red, orange, and blue, blue being the rarest of the 3.

When you purchased a package of candy, you received 1 President card in the package. The company offered a prize if you acquired and mailed in all 31 cards: 1 pound of chocolate. Here’s the catch: they withheld the William McKinley card from distribution so that people would keep buying their candy, and they would never have to give away a free pound of chocolate.

This William McKinley is considered the T206 Honus Wagner of vintage non-sports cards, with roughly 10 copies known to even exist. In 2014, an SGC 5 copy sold for $96,000. Because of how rare and expensive this card is, collectors consider the set “complete” at 30 cards without the McKinley.

Here’s a picture of my complete set that I’ve worked on over the past couple of years. I’m working to finish the set in all-blues, which is the rarest color by far as mentioned above. There are a few complete sets out there that I’m aware of, however I’ve never seen an all-blue complete set.

Was following this auction after reading about it in cllct yesterday- estimates had it selling for as high as $5M. Final sale price was $3.36M, which is a big jump from the last time a version like this sold ($2.895 last year), but still well below the high estimate.

The crown jewel of Declaration of Independence copies is Thomas Jefferson's, and nobody knows where that one is, if it still exists. Rick Harrison told us on Mantel Quality Stories it could sell for $50M if it ever surfaces. Crazy.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8c6z9-JXk0/

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/founding-documents-of-the-united-states/the-declaration-of-independence-we-hold-these

https://www.cllct.com/sports-collectibles/auctions/declaration-of-independence-to-sell-wednesday-in-sotheby-s-auction

Interesting story from @Will about a side of the auction and authentication business I didn't know much about. I don't own any historical fragments outside of relic cards (and a piece of Mickey Mantle's childhood barn on a card via Rally's auction last year), but it seems like a side of collecting I can get deep into if I find the right items.

https://www.cllct.com/sports-collectibles/memorabilia/cutting-up-historical-relics-opens-up-whole-new-category-of-collecting

@Zelda 👀 cool Marilyn Monroe details in the post.

"Under the latest national-security law, which took effect last month [ed: March 2024], possession of “seditious publications” is a crime. A Hong Kong resident could go to prison for having a keepsake copy of Apple Daily at home."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kongs-forbidden-apple-daily-possession-of-old-newspaper-can-now-be-a-crime-a637dc26?st=mndxqa0odc8c626&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
These are last day (June 24, 2021) issue. I relieved a Hong Kong resident of the legal exposure by buying the last two they had before the authorities did it the hard way. Don't see HK being free again in our lifetimes, so wanted to have these for historical nature. One thing I've learned as a collector is history is one of the main drivers of a collection's long term value, so when history makes a move, I try to do the same.
I've got a few 9/11 NYC papers saved as well (that was much closer to home for me) but those are not rare in any way; just personal.
Anyone have any rare or cherished newspapers?