There is more to picking a host coin than just its denomination and metal content. Some love tokens are date specific and others are random. While many love tokens were random coins plucked fromchange, others were sought out for their dates. Some marked a birth, an anniversary, or a date that was important between the giver and the recipient. Some dates are engraved on the coin, some arereflected by the date on the coin itself, and others do double duty with both the engraved date and a coin date matching or marking the spread of an anniversary date. Some of this is speculationbecause without a story to go along with each and every love token it can be hard to prove except that Victorian people were quite sentimental and it stands to reason.

So is this where it stops? Did anything else influence the selection of the host coin? In respect to brooches, sizes can vary from a half dime up to a Morgan dollar or a large ten or twenty dollargold piece. I have even seen a Bryan dollar love token made into a brooch. It is hard to say if that was not politically motivated or if such a large pin was ever truly in fashion. Maybe it was oneperson trying to outdo or outsize an acquaintance as if in competition with the other. Gold was certainly a status item if one wanted to brag about what one had or what one could afford.

Surprisingly the host coin selection does not stop here because I recently uncovered a rather interesting piece of ephemera which ties to the subject. Let's say that a person in 1888 wanted tomark a point in time long ago, long before love tokens were even being made here in the U.S. No coin had been saved from the time period but now looking back on an event like a birth or wedding,someone got an idea that they wanted a love token to mark the date. So what to do? What would today's person do in the same situation? Well, they would go to a local coin dealer or a coin show andeven nowadays EBay is a prime source for locating almost anything. Back then there were fewer coin dealers but it could be done if one lived in a large city or were on a dealer's mailing list.

In my hunt for all things love token related and a desire to unearth additional tangible history, I uncovered a coin dealer's "trade card" advertisement. Printed on the front of the card is a pairof colorful birds. The design may or may not be coincidental as birds were one of the most popular subjects for love token pictorials. Printed on the lower right of the card is, "Curious and RareCOINS for BANGLES, BUTTONS & c. Scott & Company 146 Fulton St., N.Y." Last year some Victorian catalog ads were printed in the Love Letter and they referenced the term "bangle". A bangle is anotherword for a charm and the term was predominantly used during the Victorian period. So here we have an actual coin dealer who is seeking out another potential market outside of numismaticcollectors.

With the love token trend or fad in full swing maybe Scott & Company thought they could tap into a whole new group of clients. So if one were wealthy, a person could have practicallyanything made into a love token and from any period, even going back to the Roman Republic. Exotic foreign coins could also be made into love tokens without having to travel outside the boundaries ofthe United States. Earlier U.S. type coins could be used to make the present even more special and unique. The only thing lacking on the trade card is a specific reference to engraving the coinsalthough it can be implied as many more coins were made into love tokens than were drilled, looped, or bezel set as simple coin jewelry.

The Scott name is like a fine pedigree and it is very exciting that it has some remote ties to numismatics and Victorian coin jewelry as the trade card shows. The Scott & Company marketingpursuits have left us with some interesting ephemera and a window into why some scarcer coin types were made into love tokens and jewelry.

For more information on the Love Token Society, see:
http://lovetokensociety.com/

For more information on the Scott companies, see:
SCOTT STAMP & COIN COMPANY, LTD. (www.coinbooks.org/v20/esylum_v20n15a18.html)