Auction Details
Welcome Message from Fred
Jack started collecting tokens before he could count his toes. I met him in 1976 when I was enthralled by embossed local drugstore bottles. The concept that these could come from remote Nevada ghost towns was one I couldn’t get away from. Then the fact that as a mining geologist, I got to go all over Nevada to many of these sites … and get paid for it! Wow! Then Jack says “Wait a minute! There’s tokens that go with these places!” I was hooked. Oh yeah – that was fifty years ago.
Jack worked for the First National Bank of Nevada, and he too got to get out and about a bit, as he got involved with bank real estate deals. A jovial character, he found and met many collectors across Nevada, and introduced me to many. I wasn’t after tokens at first, but what really got me going later was after a number of years in the mining exploration business, I had been to so many of these crazy, nutty little mining camps that I just had to collect stuff rom them. Paper, tokens, bottles … it didn’t matter. Bring it on!
We put together the first Nevada token and bottle book in 1977. It was a softbound book with yellow cover. Jack had a great idea of putting a copy of a blank Virginia and Truckee Railroad stock certificate on the back, and we would fill in the collector’s name that bought the book. I loved the idea. Back then, the only reference work that even remotely covered the fact that Nevada Ghost Town tokens existed, was a book by Adele Reed in 1974, “We Dug Those Dumps.” Adele and her husband Bill were wonderful folks, and as I did geologic work in the White Mountains east of Bishop, I got to spend a lot of time with them. Her Nevada token collection was the first big Nevada tokenc ollection that Jack purchased, and it really got him going. Me? I was still stuck on gold/silver deposits and old bottles!
John Schilling, one of the co-authors of the first book exclusively devoted to Nevada Tokens along with Sheriff Hal Dunn (of Carson City) and Len Hoskins (of Elko) was a good friend and another mining guy. He got his start in New Mexico, and years later became the chief geologist for the Nevada Bureau of Mines for 17 years. Naturally, he collected Nevada and New Mexico tokens, so I got to meet all his collecting buddies in both states too! I sold John’s Nevada token collection, along with mine (at the time) many moons past … maybe in the 1990s … memory fades. It was a lot of fun for everybody. Later, I sold Hal’s collection too.
Meanwhile Jack got picky. His favorite were tokens with the state name spelled out entirely. In a quick statistical study, that’s about 15% of all different Nevada tokens by variety in 1990. In short, 295 different Nevada tokens have the word spelled out “NEVADA” out of 1919 tokens listed in the 1990 Nevada token catalog. Jack’s collection is so special that perhaps 25% of the collection is, was, or was thought to be unique. Another 25% may be only two specimens known. Another fun fact is that most of the businesses issuing tokens were saloons, hence the twelve and a half cent value, or “one bit” drink.
Collectors have chosen to collect in many ways:
1. County
2. Specific towns (165 different in this collection)
3. Saloons (tokens that state “saloon”) (40 in this collection)
4. One token per town
5. Pictorial (8 in this collection)
6. Brunswick, Balke, Collender reverses (6 in this collection)
7. Chas. Pick reverses (2 in this collection)
8. Pool halls
9. Drug stores
10. Mining tokens
The authors of the Nevada Token Book each had specific collections: John Schilling, collected Reno. Hal Dunn, Sheriff of Carson City, collected Carson and everything Carson City Mint. Len Hoskins collected Elko and surrounds. Jack Haddock collected towns. Another advanced collector, Bill Wright, collected everything Nevada.
As the years went on, Jack put together five versions and revisions of The Nevada Token Book from 2011 to 2022. Each step of the way, he added new material and recorded as many sales as found in the public record, helping to develop hundreds of new collectors.
No one has ever put together a complete collection of Nevada tokens. There are simply too many unique pieces.
If you are after collecting from some of the big token towns, try this:
Goldfield: 167 different as of 1990
Tonopah: 124 different as of 1990
Reno: 264 different as of 1990
Nevada Token Populations and Rarity
Rarity of Nevada tokens is very difficult to determine.Individual token “populations” are stated here in this catalog
from the 1990 Nevada Token Book. This is an important attribute here. The populations listed in the 1990 Book are a direct result of the cataloging of dozens of collections at the time. Each collector painstakingly listed each piece, kept up to date by John Schilling on index cards. This is important because each collector was piece specific. The group tallied the collections of 75 different people. We cannot do this today. There are too many collectors. There are too many token shows and private treaty deals where tokens are traded or sold back and forth, often several timesper year for the same piece. Tracking becomes an impossibility.
The advent of the publishing of the Nevada Token Book caused a rise in collecting. It spurred collectors to go out and find stuff, and they did. So this book is not the “be-all, end-all” guide. It is simply a relative guide of what might be out there. Perhaps in the 36 years since I published the Nevada Token Book, individual token populations have gone upward proportionally. Good luck with that one – it’s too tough to call.
For the purpose of this sale, 43% of the tokens listed here have a 1990 rarity of two known specimens or less (102 tokens)! This is thus a remarkable collection of rarities.
Advanced metal detecting techniques have changed the hobby. Collectors are now more apt than ever to go out and look for coins in the old mining camps, where once upon a time, collecting was limited to digging old dumps and finding things in coin collections. In my own case, I first encountered this activity about 1980 when I was assigned the duty of looking at the Mary Mine site, and stumbled upon the old townsite on top of the ridge, which I never expected and did not know about. Here, out in the open, were small piles of sifted material and holes where folks sifted for tokens while digging for old bottles. Somebody or some group had been really thorough. Yet the result is abundantly clear, as Mary Mine tokens are still incredibly rare. They must not have found many.
The new digging and detecting techniques took on a whole new concept when casual diggers and collectors discovered modern machinery. Perhaps fifteen years ago, some of the guys must have seen shaker and sizing screens at commercial aggregate plants. They built small models of these gas-powered screens, hooked them up to a truck, loaded with a bobcat (minibackhoe/excavator) and off to the dumps they went - Goldfield, Tonopah, Leadville, and many more. Thousands of yards were processed. Lots of coins and tokens and a few bottles. The “Nutting Machine” has become the tool of the future. But the end result was that many of these giant dumps had already been hit so hard by diggers from the 1960s-80s, that not much was left.
Over the years, some “hoards” of tokens were found. As part of this collecting and dealing community, as well as constant travels throughout the state’s mining camps, I had access to many collectors, old timers, dump diggers and more. Many of the hoards came from slot machine route companies or individuals. Only one of them was a token collector – Jack and Christine Harkey of Carrizozo, New Mexico. They had a slot and vending machine route in New Mexico, and stories to tell! I got to see in person the massive coins and tokens they accumulated over the years, allowed to sell most later. The first “virgin” token hoard I found were the Big Casino tokens from Tonopah. One of the mining guys led me to that, and he also told me about bags of tokens he threw down one of the main mine shafts when he was in charge of a slot route, and threw them all away in the 1930s. I ran into the same thing in several of the Nevada camps, including Virginia City – down the shaft they went!
In modern times, dump diggers found bags full of tokens thrown out in the 1920s or 1930s. One of these was found in Ely and bought by my friend Bob Campbell in Salt lake City and brought to Jack and I in the early 1980s. As I recall, it was a five gallon bucket full of tokens – several thousand tokens, mostly all eastern Nevada. The Utah pieces had probably all been picked out by that point, but I’m sure there were some Modena and a few others still in there. The most common by far were the Dewey Trade Checks from Ely. These are still important tokens because they represent a saloon named after a famous and very collectible today slot machine – the Dewey. Jack got all the killer tokens out of there, and there were quite a few. Some other guys found a giant bag or two out near Tracy, California years later, and after they had picked it clean, sold me the rest, easily a thousand or more pieces. Metal detectorists have found many little bags or cans full of tokens. It can be a dozen or two dozen, sometimes more.
While I probably know of most of them, it isn't necessarily in anyone’s best interest to talk about them. A few have found up to a hundred of certain pieces, obviously discarded all at once into a hole nobody thought would ever be found. One of the fun ones from years ago – classic treasure hunting – were the Camp Independence, V. Beaudry, tokens of the 1860s. There were maybe 50 coins in that group. I sold one of each to Ron Lerch, and the others went out over time. There were a number of denominations. There are so many stories!
About Research
I know, everybody is an “instant expert” at knowing where all these tokens are from. But wait! I’ve got news! Today is a completely new day for advanced research. In the past we had to rely on various books, sometimes hard to find, even at a museum or historical society. I’ve spent months, maybe more… in libraries and museums looking at rolls of newspaper microfilm. But not any more! Curtesy of several advanced digital programs, all led by the international Gutenberg Project, started in Europe over 35 years ago, we now are gaining access to newspapers from all over America, and not just in digital form, but fully searchable (well … partially anyway)! It truly makes a whole new world. On top of that, most County and State records for some places are also fully available. Deeds, property transfers, leases, tax records, you name it, it is worth trying to look up.
As a practicing scientist for over five decades, we are trained to look for data. The greater number of data points, the closer you get to an answer of whatever your question is. In the case of this catalog, I’ve applied scientific principals to history, digging deeply for data points to answer historical questions. During this process, it becomes necessary to investigate and attack a number of distinctly different historical disciplines. Here are thirteen specific examples:
a. Want to know how important a single mining camp was? Look at the money. Needed reference: Mines Handbook
b. Want to know why a town is located where it is? Needed ref: Geology and Mineral resources of …
c. Want to know the approximate dates of major activity quickly? Needed ref: Post offices of Nevada
d. Want to know about the merchants? Needed refs: directories and gazetteers
e. Want to know the strength of the business? Needed ref: commercial business guides such as Dun, Bradstreet, Fulton-Pickens
f. Want to know the source of the town/mining camp name? needed ref: Place Names of Nevada
g. Want to know the rarity of a token or if it might exist? Nevada Token book – either the old one (Dun et al) or the new post-2000 suite (Haddock)
h. Want to know how the mining camp stacked up versus others in terms of monetary production? Needed ref: Nevadas Metal and Mineral Production
i. Want to know stories about the towns themselves? Needed refs: Paher- Nevada Ghost Towns; Shamburger’s series on Nevada mining camps; Western Places series on Nevada mining camps; Shawn Hall’s similar series.
j. Want to know general histories and key people? Needed refs: various History of Nevada – Wren, or Davis or Angel
k. Want to know what a merchant was licensed for? Needed ref: annual County license records
l. Want to know what kinds of property the merchant owned? Needed refs: County Recorder’s Office records
m. Want to know stories of the merchants current to their time in Nevada? Needed refs: Newspapers.com; Chronicling America, digitized newspapers; California digitized newspapers.
This gives you a taste of what you are about to read in this catalog. It is written informally. A scholarly work would take hundreds of pages, and if I or we quoted every reference used for each token, there would be an addendum of footnotes over 1500 long.
In the past for token collectors, regional or local “directories” or “gazetteers” were the sole source of information. But here in Nevada, these companies that were doing the “canvasing” of all the tiny and out of the way mining camps missed tons of them. Additionally, if you were a business, with perhaps a sign in the window, and the door was locked when the directory company came around, you were not listed, assumed as “out of business.”
If you have not yet used the various free internet newspaper services, there are at least four independent sources, of which I’ll recommend: newspapers.com and Chronicling America (Library of Congress), along with California Digital Newspapers (UC Riverside). The other sources generally must be accessed from a major subscription source such as a major university.
These sources are by no means complete. Western states, such as Nevada, had hundreds of tiny mining camp newspapers, and most of these have yet to be digitized. So the looking – or research- is not, and cannot be, complete until this massive project is completed. Don’t hold your breath. But it gets better every month. Trust me on that. You can also “filter” your search and limit the parameters which speeds things up tremendously.
For the purpose of this catalog, we (90% me) have used so many references, you’d laugh. But I’ll try to give you a sample of the mess around my desk right now – oops, I mean the “carefully placed” research books sitting nearby…. For each and every token listed in this catalog, I’ll bet the average number of references physically handled, not including internet or newspaper searches, is at least 5 volumes. Here is a taste of what is sitting here. Everything is within arm’s reach right now. And this does NOT include regional or local histories which would double the list:
Nevada Trade Token Book 1990
Pioneers of the Ponderosa, Ratay
Mining Districts and Mineral Resources of Nevada, Lincoln,1920
McKenneys Pacific Coast Directory, 1881
McKenneys Pacific Coast Directory 1886
Langley’s Pacific Coast Directory for 1876-1878
McKenneys Business Directory for 1882, includes Nevada
Nevadas Metal and Mineral Production, 1942
Geol and Mineral Deposits of Washoe and Storey Co., Nev 1969
Nevada Place Names , Carlson
Humboldt County, 1905, Bragg
Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, Paher
Goldfield, Shamburger
Rochester, Shamburger
Seven Troughs, Shamburger
Nevada Post Offices, Gamet & Raher
Pickens Fulton Commercial guide, 1893,
Polk Nevada Gazetteer, 1907-8
Polk Nevada Gazetteer 1914-15
Polk Nevada Gazetteer 1912-3.
1898 Bradstreet, Nevada
1896 Bradstreet
1886 Bradstreet
Reno, Sparks, Directory 1907
Reno et al, Directory 1915
Reno Directory, 1900-01
History of Nevada , Angel 1882
History of Nevada Davis, 1912
History of Nevada Scrugham
Nevada California Gazetteer, Suits Schuman, 1905
Geol and Min Res of Esmeralda County, 1972
1906 Goldfield Directory
Rawhide Directory 1909
Mines Handbook 1918
Lincoln County Tax records, 1917
Pershing County Tax records, 1917
White Pine County Tax Records, 1917,
Eureka County Tax Records, 1917
Ormsby County tax Records, 1917
Humboldt County tax records, 1917
Esmeralda County Tax Records, 1917
And a few more counties I didn’t take the time to list. This is just the stuff within arm’s reach – not the stuff I already put away.
Treasure is Where You Find It
During the process of informational discovery, absolute treasures were found. That’s right – treasures! Information is just as important as gold, and there’s plenty here. That’s what makes token collecting so fun. It opens the eyes to unseen history – to stories that have never been told. And you’ve got it right here.
In most cases, it was not a simple “look up in the Gazetteer.” All too often the directory canvasser missed businesses. The same holds true for newspaper searches – only different. The merchants often never advertised. If it was a small mining camp, then so what? There was no need to advertise, even if it was in a nearby town newspaper. Also, these businesses were not made from the money tree, and most were stressed to the bottom of the wallet, so there was no money to advertise. One needs to think laterally – into a myriad of possibilities, such as proprietor names, who bought what, when, and so forth. Maybe you have to back into it – look at the entire spectrum of time the saloon was in business. The number of permutations is huge. I tried to explore them all. But still … there are at least two tokens for which I could find nothing. Research is not an easy task. The rewards are terrific. Pure “gold.” I hope you find some.
Misattributions
There are a couple of tokens in this collection, and some in your own collection, that may have been misattributed in the past. Richard Greever has done a fantastic job of trying to keep track of all the American tokens with tokencatalog.com, and now the task is handed to TAMS, the Token and Medal Society. And you can help. Become a member.
For those tokens which may have been misattributed in the Haddock Collection, I have sufficient discussion to identify the piece, in general.
Fakes
Token collecting in the American West has gone on since the 1850s. With demand, comes higher prices. Higher prices invite fraud. There are what appear to be many fakes of Nevada tokens. These are not counterfeit – they are not copies of existing pieces. They are fantasies – things made up from the imagination. Until we, as a collecting universe, positively know who has made these things, we cannot absolutely state they are fake. At one time, I thought we could. But no, I’ve seen way too may genuine pieces made by lousy, inexperienced die makers to make the assumption that every poorly made piece is a fake.
A list was published in the 1990 Nevada Token Book. There are more. Most of these pieces have very specific attributes in common. As an example, look at the reverses. Each and every one is non-standard, not seen in this form anywhere else. But was there a legitimate lousy die sinker out there in the c1900- 1910 period? Maybe time will tell. After all, the Bigfoot story finally came out …
We have a significant collection of Jack’s “spurious tokens” that are thought to be fakes, but can’t guarantee fake or real. If interested, please inquire.
Important Notice Regarding Consignments
This is a special sale. The old company is not in business. I am retired. We stated last year, there would be some special private sales from time to time, including the Tom Westervelt mining artifact and American mining stock collection, now slated for 2027. We, and I, am not open for random consignments. I will consider very special collections as time allows. Virtually every single one of the folks that were a part of my Holabird Americana team is very thankful to all of you. We had a great run, had a ton of fun, and made collecting fun for tens of thousands of people, as well as one of my key objectives: education. Thank You!
--FRED HOLABIRD