Half cent value. Seriously?

[brandm24]

I thought this was an interesting bank token, not so much for the overall design but because of the 1/2 cent credit offered for opening a savings account.

The Commercial Savings Bank in DeMoines, Iowa was in business from 1909 until it ceased operations in 1925. There wasn't even a half cent coin minted anytime during their 16 year history...the last being in 1857. With such a "generous" incentive to do business with them it's no wonder they went under. Maybe the Cashier Mr. Jno. A Elliott was responsible. (BTW, why would anyone think it's important to abbreviate such a short name as John?). Jno., indeed! 

The token is aluminum and 22.5 mm in size. It's listed on both Numista and the TokenCatalog website references. I found no further history on the bank except that of some relatives of the owner squabbling over his assets after he died.
                                   Images courtesy of eBay ID (stevehayden)

Bruce

[chrisild]

Quite a busy design, but heck, if they were given out as free incentives to open a bank account, why not ...

Not sure about the the "non-transferable" part however. I mean, anybody who got such a token or voucher could take it to that bank and open an account - after all, the bank would "credit to bearer". Hmm.

As for abbreviating even relatively short names, that used to be somewhat common, mostly in hand-written documents. (See here.) Now why it would be done on a printed document or minted token, I don't know ...

Christian

[brandm24]

Yes, the non-transferable part is odd. I would think that means if your Uncle James...err, Jas...needed the half cent more than you did they might have an issue with the old coot trying to pass it off. Jas., of course, being the ornery relative that he is, would point out that he was the bearer and eventually get his way.

That's a great site you linked to, Christian. I've bookmarked in my computer for future reference and will definitely use it.  One thing that I didn't like about the list is that they didn't have an abbreviation for my name. Bruce never makes the cut
in these kinds of things. No hurricanes ever named after me or personalized souvenir coffee mugs with my name or key chains...nothing. What's a Bruce to do?

Thanks

Bru / Bce

[Figleaf]

Fun list. My wife was delighted I could shorten my name to Pet but I am worrying about the implications. As for Bruce, the obvious solution is Rbt: "If at first you don't succeed - try, try again".

I suppose the half cent could be added to an interest payment that would otherwise have been rounded down. It doesn't sound like a great deal for the client, but for a small bank with say 200 000 savings accounts, it amounts to $1 000 at max. Bad advertising strategy, but maybe they were sneakily hoping the pieces would circulate, giving them seigniorage.

Peter

[FosseWay]

I've got the attached two - half and one cent - from Rockville Centre, NY. Presumably a similar era. By the way, the half cent is larger than the cent in real life.

As to the low denominations - these must date from a similar period to the tax tokens denominated in mills. I wonder whether denomination-wise they were aimed at children, while also functioning like any promotional token for potential adult consumers. I certainly remember depositing accumulated small change, down to halfpennies, in my post office account, and every halfpenny counted!

On abbreviations like "Jno", "Jas" and so on - these date from a time when all one-off written communication was hand-written with a pen, and moreover with a pen that required dipping in ink frequently and was prone to blotting if lifted from the paper too often. This is the origin of "copperplate" cursive - to allow a flow of text from the pen with the minimum need to wave it around.

With Jno one can wonder why the n and o are in that order, since in both English and Latin (Johannes) they are the other way round in the full name. My guess is that it was originally written Jn with a small o above the n (similar to the circle on the Swedish letter å). Many abbreviations are marked in this way, going way back to the time of medieval illuminated manuscripts. But it was easier (as mentioned, with a quill) to add the o cursively to the n than to remove the pen to make the circle above. Just my guess!

[Figleaf]

If you go back to medieval times, an important reason for abbreviations (also breaking off words) was that vellum was expensive. Hence a class of diacritical marks that replaces a letter e.g. replacing oe by ö in German. When keyboards came along, paper was cheap and you'd want the keyboard as small as possible, so it became OK to type the letters instead of the diacritical mark and similar, especially when using a keyboard for a foreign language, therefore Strasse instead of Straße in typed (and now official) German.

Sales tax tokens had their heyday around 1930 to 1945. The token Bruce is showing is from the period 1909-1925.

Peter

[FosseWay]

Sales tax tokens had their heyday around 1930 to 1945. The token Bruce is showing is from the period 1909-1925.

My point was that the denominations were similarly small - if tax tokens were deemed necessary, then the half-cent offered here might well also have been taken seriously.

[Figleaf]

Yes, I see your point. In general things work that way because of growth and inflation, but the reasoning doesn't work in this case. The mils were taken seriously because of the great crisis, which was a period of serious deflation (prices getting lower) and unemployment (poverty), while the period 1909-1925 was a one of growth and inflation. Therefore, if mils were taken seriously in a later period, it doesn't follow that half cents were appreciated in the immediately preceding period. In addition, the function of the two token classes was different.

The mils served primarily to save the poor (a comparatively large segment of the population at the time) a few cents on taxes and many, if not most seem to have been generally accepted in the area where they had been issued. They could not even have served to lower other expenses than sales tax.

The half cents are not suitable to save in paying taxes, if only because the bank had declared them non-transferable - probably meaning that they wouldn't accept more than a single token per customer. They could only be used at the bank, while it lasted. They were more like discount stamps from a shop.

Peter

[brandm24]

I can see the point for the 1/2 cent denomination on sales tax tokens. I've seen them before, too. The bank token is another story  however. An incentive to open an account with them? Not likely. The real purpose must lie somewhere else. It could be an appeal to children...or should I say to children's PARENTS? None of it makes sense to me.

Befuddled as usual 

Bruce  err...Rbt.