The E-Sylum:  Volume 9, Number 26, June 25, 2006, Article 11

CIVIL WAR CARDBOARD SCRIP

Speaking of city directory research, David Gladfelter inquired
about the John Adam's cardboard scrip (lot 850) in my consignment
to this week's American Numismatic Rarities sale:
anrcoins.com

I responded "This one came from Benj Fauver, but many of my cardboard
pieces came from the Proskey/Boyd/Ford collections. I learned prior
to the sale that the attributions in the Bowers & Merena Patterson
sale were by Doug Ball.  Proskey bought Henry Ezekiel's collection
and some of the pieces Ball attributed to NYC are actually from
Cincinnati.  Ezekiel wrote an article for The Numismatist in 1912:
Civil War Card Money of Cincinnati, 1861-1865 (Vol.25, 1912 JUN,
Pg.218).  Other articles from the NIP index include:

War Cardboard Money In Savannah \ANA\Vol.31\1918 FEB\Pg.94
Cardboard Money Of the Civil War (C. Albert Jacob, Jr.)
  \ANA\Vol.50\1937 DEC\Pg.1097"

David Gladfelter adds: "I also attended the Proskey-Boyd sale and
scarfed up most of the New Jersey lots. I later illustrated them
in color for our local exonumia society newsletter, Jerseyana.
They included the Demarest and Ward set of three 6-subject forms
you may remember, with the address 105 Broad Street. City directory
research proved that these chits were from Newark.

Doug Ball made many errors in this catalog, which was unlike him.
He must have been very rushed. All of the lots went to six bidders.
I have the paddle numbers of each bidder. They were Steve Tanenbaum,
Ray Waltz, Dr. York, myself and now you -- one still unidentified
(possibly David Schenkman).

During lot viewing I saw the importance of making a record of this
collection and offered to pay Dave Bowers whatever it would cost to
use the hotel copier to do this. He couldn't get permission so I
tried to stare hard at each piece to record them in my memory. What
I recall now was the very bright colors of the cardboard and the
fabric -- they seemed to have been made like plywood, with a light
coating of thin colored paper over an inner pithy material. That's
probably why many of the backs peeled off when the chits were
removed from the mounting.

I wrote several articles at the time, for TAMS Journal and CWTS
Journal, about the Civil War cardboard chits and even started a
catalog of them, but dropped it for lack of time and failure to
record the Proskey-Boyd items. To this day there's no catalog.

The cardboard chits did not go out of use when the copper and
brass tokens came along - they were used throughout the Civil War.
I have two from Wisconsin with 1863 dates and saw one (from Pewaukee)
plated in a Kirtley sale with an 1864 date, which unfortunately I
didn't get - it would have proven my point."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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