Bob Gabriel, President of the International Organization of Wooden Money Collectors (IOWMC) writes:

ELKTON, Md..Walter and Mayme Scott don't buy the old maxim, "Don't take any wooden nickels." In fact, they'll take all the wooden nickelsthey can get.

The Scotts - she's 60; he's 67 and a retired auto worker - own a small fortune in the bogus currency. Scott estimates that he has about25,000 wooden nickels. They're kept in about 50 loose-leaf binders, each book bulging with 25 to 30 pages of coin-filled plastic pockets.There's enough, Scott jokingly guesses, "to float a battleship."

The Scotts, who live in this small town in northeastern Maryland's Cecil County, found their hobby doing another collector a favor. In 1974 afriend asked Scott to deliver the man's special wooden nickel collection to an exhibit in Shippensburg, Pa. Soon Scott had his own 273-piececollection commemorating the county's 300th anniversary.

Now the Scotts own buckets of wooden nickels issued by chain restaurants including McDonald's, Dairy Queen and Hardee's. Some were worthreal money, such as the one that reads: "Good for 25 cents with next purchase at any White Coffee Pot Jr.," a Baltimore fast-foodchain.

They own handfuls of Canadian spruce dollars - relatively rare oversized wooden nickels made from spruce trees that fetch $5 and more on thecollectors' market. Their riches also include wooden nickels from the now-defunct Sambo's restaurant chain, which mulched nickels left overwhen it went out of business. Collectors have paid up to $18 for those hard-to-find Sambo's nickels.

The Scotts, who also collect wooden Christmas cards and wooden postcards, say their collection is virtually worthless. But they add that a woodennickel without monetary value printed on it isn't worth, well, let's say "a wooden nickel".

"It has to have a monetary value (printed on it) or it's not a wooden nickel," Scott said. "It's a wooden token." Andthey know their wood coinage. Both Scotts are past presidents of the International Organization of Wooden Money Collectors (IOWMC), founded in 1964.Walter was the 18th president in 1982 and Mayme was the 23rd president in 1988. Scott is also in his 10th year as editor of the club's officialnewsletter, Bunyan's Chips. The newsletter is mailed to about 350 of the club's 375 members, Scott said, including two in Puerto Rico and acouple of servicemen in Germany. Based on the fluctuating membership, Scott estimates that at least 2,000 people in America collect woodennickels.

"We (collect), because it's a hobby," said Mayme Scott. "We just like doing it. We like the friendships we make."

According to the Macmillan Encyclopedic Dictionary of Numismatics, the first wooden money in America was ersatz dollars made for theunlucky depositors of the Citizens Bank of Tenino, WA, when the bank failed in the 1930s. Customers were supposed to use the wooden money ascash.

Noting that wood imitations of paper money were made in Austria in 1920, and that Canada and other countries have occasionally struck woodencurrency, the dictionary defined wood money as still "considered distinctly an American contribution to exonumia" - objects that resemblemoney but are not legal tender.

Albert Bonesio, 72, of Torrington, Conn., first vice president of the International Organization of Wooden Money Collectors, has collected woodennickels for 30 years. He's also president of a spinoff wooden money club, Dedicated Wooden Money Collectors (DWMC).

A collection's value just depends, Scott said. "What do you want to pay for it? What's it worth to you? That's the bottom line.It's not unlike any other collection, coins included, what's it worth to you?"

Bob adds: