Can You Dig It - 1918 Bank Token

Published by Larry on Tagged Promotional, Give-A-Ways, Relic Finds

The featured coin for the month of July’s Promo give-away is a rare bank token from Tarpon Springs minted in 1918. This is a dug specimen just like the one pictured. The pictured token is one of 45 I dug in a cache a few year’s ago that were buried by the man who was president of the bank when it collasped (as the result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929). I bartered with C. R. Clark for rare US coins releasing 40 of the 45 uncirculated tokens into his hands. He is renowned for his work on Florida Trade Tokens. This token is attributed on page 451 of His Book, Florida Tokens, and has an R3 rarity level. I am proud of this token and 4 others attributed as a result of my metal detector finds in Tarpon Springs. In fact, the other 4 have a rarity level of R6, meaning less than 7 tokens are known to exist.

The 92 years young bank president was a part of my “Hometown Advantage” research. He elaborated about his work with the opening of the bank in 1918 and how this token was distributed as a promotion to get people to open an account. When the bank was forced to close in 1929, my friend took the 45 remaining tokens, put them in a small metal box and buried them behind a utility building in his back yard. These pristine gilt-edge tokens remained in the ground until 1990 when he told me about them and gave me permission to go to his old homestead and dig them up. I used my favorite detector of all time, a Fisher 1260, and found them within a few minutes at more than a foot deep.

Notice that this token was worth fifty cents for opening a new savings account of five dollars. The R3 level means that only 21-35 tokens are known outside of the cache he received from me. I have seven of those tokens and July’s coin drawing winner will receive one of the two dug examples. To qualify for each month’s promo give-away just leave a comment on one of more than 60 posts on this blog. Here’s to “diggin it”! Larry