PERSONAL TOKENS OF COLLECTOR JERRY ADAMS

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V12 2009 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 12, Number 45, November 8, 2009, Article 19

Reader Jerry Adams kindly sent me a group of his personal tokens. They are very nicely designed and executed, and I asked him for some images to share with our readers. He also wrote up the following background story on the creation of the tokens. Thanks again! -Editor

I started out having the encased cents made by Penny Press Mint of Spanish Fork, Utah. I bought my own UNC wheat cents for the encasements, and sent them to PPM owner Kelly Finnegan. See http://www.pennypressmint.com/ for more information on the company.

I designed the layouts myself. Prior to retirement I worked as an architectural draftsman, so I did the designs digitally, and sent them to Kelly at PPM. Kelly then refines the designs and sends digital images back to me for approval. The process went smoothly and I had several types of encased cents done.

Later I contacted PPM about making a "non-encased" token for me to use as a personal token, and Kelly worked with me in the same manner, to produce the design for both the obverse and reverse dies for the personal token runs, in both bimetal and aluminum. Currently Penny Press Mint is working with me again on designing another die, for an additional personal token, which may be ready in 6 months or so.

The whole process is a lot of fun, and I think Kelly at PPM enjoys the process as much as I do!

Here is a photo of Kelly Finnegan of PPM at his table at the 2009 Salt Lake City NTCA show, holding two of the dies that struck my personal tokens:

I enjoyed reading the article on the B. Max Mehl occupation as a pneumatic broker! since I live basically in Fort Worth (5 miles north), I am familiar with Mr. Mehl's legacy.

The fact the census taker listed him as pneumatic broker, shows something i have noticed in census records. Sometimes they get words messed up, perhaps it is the writing or the hearing of what the person said, or the basic understanding of terms of the census taker.

One particular guy I researched, G.W. Felt, who was an Indian Trader, ...I found him listed in the 1880 census on line as occupation as "Indian Traveler" rather than Indian Trader. This error could have happened a number of ways, either the person reading the hand written census may have misread the script writing and mistook "trader" for "traveler" or it was written in the census as traveler, etc. Personally, I believe the person transcribing it made an error and typed in Traveler rather than trader. Old handwriting is often hard to read.

Jerry Adams is not a current member of the Token and Medal Society, so perhaps he is unaware that TAMS has well over 800 members. Certainly TAMS is "the largest group of collectors of trade tokens [and other exonumia] in the world."