Nostalgia & History > Curious Coins

Found these two in a rummage sale baggie today. The top coin in each frame is from the UP at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 (front and back). I assume is was handed out as an enticement to get folks to ride the new streamlined trains.

The lower image in each frame is a token of some sort (front and back). Simply says "Johnson Fare Box Co."

Can anyone shed additional light on either of these? Any chance they may be worth more than a nickel a piece?

Thx.

Don
Yreka, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/15 22:06 by odub.

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First and third were advertisements promoting the new UP Streamline trains made of aluminum. I have one of the bottom coins.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

The brass coins are streetcar token. These appear to be a generic token, for a very common form of farebox, the "Johnson Box".

Below are some examples of Twin City Rapid Transit Co. tokens for their Johnson Boxes. In this case TCRT was the overlying corporation that operated separate street railway companies in Minneapolis and in St. Paul, but tokens were used interchangeably. Though you had to pay a second fare when you crossed the city limits.

I remember when the cash fare was a dime, but you could purchase tokens, say a dollars worth, at a reduced rate - somewhere around 7 cents.

-John



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/15 23:19 by LarryDoyle.

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The UP made several different aluminum coins for different events they participated in back then. I have one somewhere that was given away when the M-10000 was on tour.

The Johnson Fare Box coin you have is interesting. It was meant to demonstrate how the fare box worked at trade shows and when a salesman would demo to a potential customer. I am not aware of any transit company that used those - they usually were customized like the other tokens shown in this thread.

Tim

A Johnson Fare Box counts it coins by size. The token was smaller that a dime. I renovated a Johnson Fare Box at Orange Empire Railway Museum in 2011. Here are some photos.


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The last shot shows it installed in the drivers area of PCC 3100.


Enjoy,
Marty Bernard



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/15 10:30 by MartyBernard.

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The 1939 GG Expo had a fairly large area dedicated to transportation, as was common at the major fairs of 1930-1950 or so. The GG expo had a rather huge model train exhibit in one of the buildings, and around the sides of the model (which took up a good bit of the center of the floor) there were booths for the various participating transportation vendors.

Other than some few pictures of the model train I've never seen inside pictures of the building, nor a complete vendors list, but certainly the major Western railroads were showing off, and it is likely that the SF Muni would also have had a booth. They might have been showing off a fairbox and how to use it; or the Johnson company might have had a booth of its own. In those days people were curious about the technology making their lives easier, and that often included looking under the covers, or knowing that there were second-tier vendors involved.