Canteen tokens

[Figleaf]

Hotel staff works in a caffeine cloud also. This is the hotel where John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their "bed-in" to protest against the Vietnam war. Both sides are the same. This token comes in two sizes.

Peter

[Figleaf]

In the Netherlands, when it comes to coffee, nothing is sacred. These people should not even think of coffee, and yet... The secret of TCCEC is ... The Coca Cola Export Company.

Peter

[Figleaf]

Of course, the above are all lowbrow brews. Simon Levelt has the opposite in a small chain of specialised coffee and tea shops. Here, you smell the beans (yes, coffee is a bean, not a powder) or crush one between your teeth before you buy and you always know which country the beans are coming from. The contraption on the token is a hand coffee bean grinder. Wood, metal and a delicious aroma.

Peter

[malj1]

I am surprised at the 'HILTON CAFETARIA' I have visions of queuing with an aluminium tray and plastic knives and forks; pay the lady at the end....

[FosseWay]

There is an article in one of the periodical publications of Svenska Pollettföreningen called "Polletterna som försvann", or "The tokens which disappeared". It recounts an attempt to introduce tokens for the coffee machines in the Svea High Court building on Riddarholmen in Stockholm, which was ultimately unsuccessful because the tokens kept disappearing. People bought them from reception but then apparently did not use them in the coffee machines. It is a mystery what happened to them. Perhaps the entire workforce of Sweden's court service collects tokens.

The tokens in question were AFAIK standard Sporrong brass tokens with Sporrong's current logo of a large S and three blobs above. Dunno what, if anything, was on the other side.

[Figleaf]

I am surprised at the 'HILTON CAFETARIA' I have visions of queuing with an aluminium tray and plastic knives and forks; pay the lady at the end....

That's exactly right, except that it wasn't for the guests, but for the staff. Today, coffee is free for the staff, but they can't drink it in sight of the guests.

Peter

[FosseWay]

Here are a couple of minimalistic Swedish canteen tokens that do exactly what they say on the tin, but don't yield any clues as to where they were used:

Kaffe (coffee): brass, 18.5 mm, 3.59 g

Middag (dinner): brass, 17 mm (ignoring the missing bit), 1.53 g

At least I know who made the Middag one (though Sporrong have made most Swedish tokens through the years) and it is theoretically possible to search through their archive to find out what various tokens were used for and who commissioned them. This has been done in respect of the 'standard series' of early 20th-century tokens that have the value in öre on one side and initials on the other.

The Kaffe token is AFAICS entirely anonymous.

[Figleaf]

Usually, the coffee tokens go in coffee machines (yes! really! ) This means that the diameter is a clue. Normally, there is a limited number of canteen coffee machine makers. They may offer generic tokens like this one, but they'll match inscribed tokens. I have a little excel data base of tokens from a few countries I keep exactly for this purpose.

The middag token is unfortunately unlikely to have gone into a machine. Canteen token seems the most likely option.

Peter

[malj1]

I found an interesting set issued for Greenland, oblong aluminium 40x30, centre hole, a set for a day:-  MORGENMAD - breakfast, FROKOST - lunch, MIDDAG - dinner, KAFFE M/BROD.
They are here.

[malj1]

I have two coffee tokens of this 18.5mm size both for German coffee machines which could also be placed in Sweden.

Servomat Steigler; Beimerstetten Germany



and Spengler GmbH, Bruchsal, Baden Wuerttemberg, Germany.



same both sides.

[FosseWay]

I found an interesting set issued for Greenland, oblong aluminium 40x30, centre hole, a set for a day:-  MORGENMAD - breakfast, FROKOST - lunch, MIDDAG - dinner, KAFFE M/BROD.
They are here.

How confusing. The Danish for lunch appears to be frokost, but the equivalent Swedish word (frukost) means breakfast. The Swedish for lunch is, er, lunch  .

The 'brød' you get with the coffee will be cake, or what the Swedes call fikabröd, not just a slice of bread.

[Figleaf]

How confusing. The Danish for lunch appears to be frokost, but the equivalent Swedish word (frukost) means breakfast.

The solution may be Louis XIV, the sun king. He loved sleeping late, so that his court went hungry in the morning. Their solution was to invent a whole new meal in the morning, one could skip if one was still asleep.

The word "dejeuner" is rooted in "jeune" (fast), while "de" is a negation, so a dejeuner in French is what a break-fast would be in English, except that it is lunch and breakfast is "petit dejeuner" (small breakfast.) Sweden went with the Germans, Denmark with the French for the name of their meals, I suppose.

Peter

[FosseWay]

Found out a bit more about the Middag token I showed above. It's from the canteen at Sabbatsbergs Sjukhus (hospital) in Stockholm.

[malj1]

Good to know. So there could be tokens for other meals and coffee similar to the Greenland tokens mentioned. [different names of course]

However I wonder if they are exclusive to the hospital ~ or are they in fact a generic series that Sporrong supply for use in any canteen?

[FosseWay]

I haven't seen any other meals in the same series, but that's not to say they don't exist. When I get my copy of the Stockholm token book I may be able to shed more light on that.

Your second point is an interesting question. I wonder whether the complete token was generic, and the hospital specifically reqested that the chunk be cut off to make it readily distinguishable. Such treatment of tokens is fairly widespread in Sweden (and specifically with other Sporrong tokens) -- there are lots of ferry tokens from Stockholms Ångslups AB in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes, and with utstansade (punched out? sorry, my English is deserting me) numbers where the tariff changed. These modifications appear to have been made to the planchet after striking rather than having a design being struck onto a specially prepared planchet of a given shape.

That is certainly true of the Middag token, as the example I saw today whose owner identified it for me had part of the G missing, whcih mine doesn't.