Hundreds of pieces of Canadian history are ready to be auctioned off at the 2015 Toronto Coin Expo this spring.

Held in partnership with New Brunswick's Geoffrey Bell Auctions, the semi-annual coin show takes place May 29 and 30 at the Toronto Reference Library on Yonge Street.

Geoff Bell, auctioneer and owner of Geoffrey Bell Auctions, said he expects the sale, which includes his collection of about 400 pre-Confederation tokens, to be outstanding.

"We're going to have my collection, which is probably the best offered in the last 20 years, and we've got some nice supplementary material from other collectors to go with it," he said.

"It's going to be a real first-class sale."

Luckily for Bell and other Canadian numismatists, Canada's complex social history - often divided between lines like English/French, Upper/Lower and Aboriginal/European - has left behind a remarkable variety of coins and tokens for collectors to enjoy.

"As you know, tokens are broken down into categories - there's the pre-Confederation tokens, and then after that we've got local tokens, and they were issued by merchants in various communities to give away, similar to Canadian Tire money."

Local business would often dispense these tokens in their customer's change to entice them to shop there again soon. However, prior to Canadian Confederation, there was a lack of specie (coins made from precious metals), so businesses were left to issue their own tokens as currency.

"This will probably be the finest pre-Confederation token collection offered at least since the [Roy] Hughes collection was offered a number of years ago. Condition-wise, it's going to be outstanding; variety-wise and in regards to the availability of rare pieces, it's probably as good as has been offered in a long time."

Bell has been collecting these tokens over the past five decades. "Of course, the obvious thing is, as you get more sophisticated at it, you want better-conditioned specimens plus you want the very rare specimens, and some of them are very rare."

One of the rarities offered from his collection is a roughly 170-year-old McAuslane token (Breton 956) struck for the owner of a Newfoundland dry goods store in 1844.

"The star of the collection is the McAuslane token," said Bell. "He was a blacksmith in St. John's around 1844, and he ordered 100 farthing-sized tokens to use in his store."

To read the CoinWeek article, see:
170-year-old token 'star of collection' at Toronto Coin Expo (www.coinweek.com/world-coins/canadian-coins/170-year-old-canadian-token-star-of-collection-at-toronto-coin-expo/)

To read the Canadian Coin News article, see:
170-year-old token 'star of collection' at Toronto Coin Expo (http://canadiancoinnews.com/170-year-old-token-star-collection-toronto-coin-expo/)