5-cent Good-For; Pickering Lumber Co.

[villa66]

A 5-cent good-for from the W.R. Pickering Lumber Company, coined about 1913 I think, for use in the company store, and elsewhere in the company town of Haslam, Texas.

The patent date on this bimetallic token is July 1899, but the town of Haslam—which gets its name from general manager of Pickering Lumber, Will Haslam—was built by the company beginning in 1913 and got its post office in 1914, so I figure this town-coinage got its start about the same time.

Pickering Lumber sold its Haslam operation in ’31, but the town continued to add residents until about 1950 when it topped out at 300, give or take. The local lumber business went into rapid decline soon after, though. Haslam lost its post office in 1954 and by 1966 its population was down to about 40. Only the opening of the nearby Toledo Bend Reservoir in the late-1960s saved Haslam from a descent into permanent ghost-town status—its population has more than doubled since then.

The old-growth forest within reach of Haslam’s saw blades is now a thing of the past, and so is that East Texas company store, but this little token is still here to call those twin predations to mind.

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[villa66]

Here’s a P.S. to the above, about the coiner of this piece.

Chicago firm S. D. Childs and Company (1837-1938) used Patent 632,938 (granted to its employee George G. Greenburg on 12 Sep 1899), “Art of making bimetallic coins or checks.”

(“Checks” as used here is rather outdated; here it denotes “tokens” rather than today’s more usual “bank drafts.”)

There are theories—but apparently no settled answer—about why Childs’ tokens bear a patent date of July 1899 when the patent—which was applied for in January 1899—wasn’t granted until September.

One other practical note about why these bimetallic tokens were relatively uncommon…they were expensive. I’ve seen mention of the comparative prices in a manufacturer’s catalog from 1930…5-cent tokens, per 100, bimetallic: $8.20; brass: $3.70; aluminum $3.40.

And when one of the big attractions of a 5-cent token to a merchant is that the person receiving it in change might not come back to redeem it, it’s no good for it to have cost the merchant 8.2 cents.


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