[67drake]

I remember when I was a kid when the truck would come around to deliver coal to peoples coal cellars. I distinctly remember mixed in with the coal were small metal “coins”. I used to try to snatch them out of the wheelbarrows as the guys filled the cellar. Usually getting in their way and getting yelled at. I thought it was real money.
I can find nothing on the internet about these small coins/tokens. Anybody remember these, or am I crazy? What were they called?

[poncho-mike]

Does this explain what you've seen?

http://isgs.illinois.edu/outreach/ge...es/pyrite-suns

[67drake]

No. These were wafer thin, possibly aluminum, about the size of a dime. I can’t remember what markings were on them, if any. There weren’t a lot of them mixed in though.
I remember I tried to get one I saw in the wheelbarrow as it was filling out of the back of the truck, and it buried my arm under coal. I got yelled at for that too!
I couldn’t have been older than 5 or so as coal was on it’s way out in the Chicago area in the late 60’s.

[77 TRASHCAN]

In the 60’s ( I was born in 1958) one of my good friends Dad had a small business in a small town in Eastern Iowa. There were fairly large crawl spaces under these businesses accessible from the back. Whatever the next door business was,(these buildings were all adjoined together, as was common then), the next door building crawl space was filled with coal. We were exploring one day, thought we had found treasure or something, LOL NOT.
I’d bet some of that coal is still there. The crawl space is was not really noticeable, there was an opening you had to seek out. I’m sure that building used the coal for heat at one time. Sounds like a fire hazard, but at one time the more “well to do” folks had coal delivered to their homes for heating. Later heating oil was used. My Dad owned a Skelly oil a fuel dealer. The stuff was similar to diesel, was commonly called fuel oil.

[android 211]

You could burn it in your diesel but then you're not paying road use taxes and the law took a dim view of that. Cost a lot less than gas station diesel.

[OZZIEVILLE 67 2 door]

So if my memory serves me correct,
Downunder we had delivered coke , this was for boiling the copper, for the old aunts to boil the washing, we also had a pick up from the nightsoilman .

Sorry got no pics of the nightsoilman carting his drum on his shoulder to main $h1T cart.
Early 60's in Sydney

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

[sdbob]

Dont remember the 'coins' at all. Just that we wanted coal from the 'Pittsburgh Seam not as much unburnable stone. Yep use to play in the 'slack' with my trucks,got yelled at.

['ol Pinion head]

Drake, did WI or the state you grew up in have millage tokens? aka tax tokens? Have a bunch of them from OK & a few from MO. several other states used them as well. These were about the same diam as a dime, but thinner. OK discontinued use of their tax tokens in '61 & they were basically useless. In the late '60's, at the rambling big homestead place on my grandmother's side, there were gobs of alum & brass tax tokens nailed on with tacks out on outbuilding doors, barns, etc.

[Bentwheelbob]

Those little “coins” are coal scatter tags. While all coal generally looks the same, there can be significant differences in the combustion characteristics and heat content. Back in the days when there was significant industrial and home heating demand for coal, scatter tags were used to identify specific sources and suppliers of coal, and to build brand loyalty.

These scatter tags are from the Blue Diamond Leatherwood mine. The company I work for now owns this mine which produces 1.4m tons per year and still supplies sized coal to industrial accounts and PCI coal to blast furnaces in the US and Canada.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/332810604734

[Heybuck]

Originally Posted by OZZIEVILLE 67 2 door

So if my memory serves me correct,
Downunder we had delivered coke , this was for boiling the copper, for the old aunts to boil the washing, we also had a pick up from the nightsoilman .

Sorry got no pics of the nightsoilman carting his drum on his shoulder to main $h1T cart.
Early 60's in Sydney

G'day John

I don't remember coke being used in Melbourne but they used to bring long trains up from the Latrobe valley every night loaded with briquettes. Most were used in the power stations of the day but nearly everyone used to have them delivered as a heat source in winter. Never heard anyone wailing about "Climate Change" in those days.

When I was a kid in the early 1950's we had an Iceman delivering blocks of ice, the bread man used to deliver out of horse and cart, The milkman came every day with his horse and cart. Fruit and Vegetables were hawked every second day off the back of a truck. And so on. I really think for the most part they were better days.

But I sure was happy when the sewer was connected so no more stinky old pan out in the dunny down the back.

Ian

[carbking]

Originally Posted by 'ol Pinion head

Drake, did WI or the state you grew up in have millage tokens? aka tax tokens? Have a bunch of them from OK & a few from MO. several other states used them as well. These were about the same diam as a dime, but thinner. OK discontinued use of their tax tokens in '61 & they were basically useless. In the late '60's, at the rambling big homestead place on my grandmother's side, there were gobs of alum & brass tax tokens nailed on with tacks out on outbuilding doors, barns, etc.

OPH - Missouri had "tax tokens" or "mills". Before calculators, sales tax was not rounded to the nearest cent, but to the nearest tenth of a cent.

Missouri's first issues in the 1930's were cardboard, about the size of bottle caps. These were replaced by slightly smaller cardboard versions in the late 1930's. About 1939 or 1940, the tokens were made from zinc in "coins" about the size of a quarter, but these were discontinued during WWII due to the war demand for zinc. Plastic became the name of the game.

I have a collection of many different.

Drake - we burned coal when I was fairly young (early 1950's), but we were too poor to have it delivered; we went after it in Dad's pickup. I "helped" shovel several loads when I was 6 or 7. Local coal (at one time in the early 1900's, Randolph County Missouri was the world's largest coal producing area) was dusty. The coal companies got the bright idea to oil the coal to cut down on the dust. When one "banked" the fire for the night, not all of the oil would burn, and would congeal on the inside of the chimney. Next morning, when the fire was stoked, occasionally there would be a chimney fire. After one of these where Dad was afraid the house would catch, he said something to the effect of NO MORE COAL (I was not supposed to remember his exact words ), and he bought a chain saw.

I do not recall any coal tokens, in the coal; but the coal companies did issue tokens to employees, good at the "company store".

I have memories, but not fond memories, of burning coal.

Jon.

[Stuart]

I remember when I was a kid and we had a coal furnace, but there weren't any coins or tokens in it. I do remember having to load the hopper, and periodically having to fish clinkers out of the furnace.

['ol Pinion head]

Thanks Bob for the scatter tag education!

Jon, two of my great uncles built large furniture out of native walnut & oak out of a big shed on the homeplace. Nearby, farther out in the thicket, they had a still they cooked moonshine. Am sure they didn't like "Revenuers", the mills were something they didn't think much of either. Nailing the OK mills to the barn was more of a celebration for them in the early 60's.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Bentwheelbob

Those little “coins” are coal scatter tags. While all coal generally looks the same, there can be significant differences in the combustion characteristics and heat content. Back in the days when there was significant industrial and home heating demand for coal, scatter tags were used to identify specific sources and suppliers of coal, and to build brand loyalty.

These scatter tags are from the Blue Diamond Leatherwood mine. The company I work for now owns this mine which produces 1.4m tons per year and still supplies sized coal to industrial accounts and PCI coal to blast furnaces in the US and Canada.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/332810604734

Living in Logan County WV coal camps as a kid in the 1940's, the company houses had small coal houses that they delivered coal to. I was always fascinated watching the coal chutes unfold from the trucks, swiveling around and dumping the coal clattering down into the building. I once had the very end of my shoe run over by a coal delivery truck as I followed along side it. No injury.

I don’t know if these “tokens” were used as “scatter tags” but they were used in advertising some of the varieties of coals mined (and mixed) by Island Creek Coal Company at its various operations in the southern WV area back in the day when Island Creek was the third largest coal company in the country.

[Shiny]

Originally Posted by Bentwheelbob

Those little “coins” are coal scatter tags. While all coal generally looks the same, there can be significant differences in the combustion characteristics and heat content. Back in the days when there was significant industrial and home heating demand for coal, scatter tags were used to identify specific sources and suppliers of coal, and to build brand loyalty.

These scatter tags are from the Blue Diamond Leatherwood mine. The company I work for now owns this mine which produces 1.4m tons per year and still supplies sized coal to industrial accounts and PCI coal to blast furnaces in the US and Canada.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/332810604734

That's interesting! Thanks for the education.

What is PCI coal? I remember seeing the remains of old coke ovens at a smelter site in Pueblo CO. I think they were visible from I-25. I understood they used the coke to reduce iron ore and obviously the coke was made from coal. Is PCI coal used for fuel or to make coke?

[67drake]

Originally Posted by 'ol Pinion head

Drake, did WI or the state you grew up in have millage tokens? aka tax tokens? Have a bunch of them from OK & a few from MO. several other states used them as well. These were about the same diam as a dime, but thinner. OK discontinued use of their tax tokens in '61 & they were basically useless. In the late '60's, at the rambling big homestead place on my grandmother's side, there were gobs of alum & brass tax tokens nailed on with tacks out on outbuilding doors, barns, etc.

This would have been 1968-1970ish in Chicago. I have no idea about it being tax tokens.

Originally Posted by Bentwheelbob

Those little “coins” are coal scatter tags. While all coal generally looks the same, there can be significant differences in the combustion characteristics and heat content. Back in the days when there was significant industrial and home heating demand for coal, scatter tags were used to identify specific sources and suppliers of coal, and to build brand loyalty.

These scatter tags are from the Blue Diamond Leatherwood mine. The company I work for now owns this mine which produces 1.4m tons per year and still supplies sized coal to industrial accounts and PCI coal to blast furnaces in the US and Canada

So were these tags mixed in with the coal?
That sounds like a logical explanation. I don’t remember them having any color though that I remember, just plain aluminum looking. BUT I was very young, and it was 50 years ago.

[carbking]

Originally Posted by 'ol Pinion head

Thanks Bob for the scatter tag education!

Jon, two of my great uncles built large furniture out of native walnut & oak out of a big shed on the homeplace. Nearby, farther out in the thicket, they had a still they cooked moonshine. Am sure they didn't like "Revenuers", the mills were something they didn't think much of either. Nailing the OK mills to the barn was more of a celebration for them in the early 60's.

OPH - did they raise hogs?

You might want to visit the homeplace and retrieve the tokens. They are a BIG collector item. Some of them bring some serious dollars today.

http://www.taxtoken.org/catalog.htm

Jon.

[gary bennett]

In the 1940s I was say 5yrs old. The coal truck would raise the dump body and the coal would run down the chute into the coal bin in the cellar. Dont remember any tokens.. We had the furnace for heat and a pot stove to heat hot water.

[boltbuster]

Originally Posted by Stuart

I remember when I was a kid and we had a coal furnace, but there weren't any coins or tokens in it. I do remember having to load the hopper, and periodically having to fish clinkers out of the furnace.

The coal truck in our town would deliver from the alley. My folks' house had been built right on the alley, so the driver ran the chute into a small window at ground level. Dad used the clinkers to fill the holes in the alley. Out playing, I took a fall in a bunch of clinkers. They cut through my jeans and left pieces in my knee. Dad washed the knee with green soap, picked the pieces out with a needle, and finished the operation with some good old iodine. I've still got the scar.

[FMile Pontiacs]

I believe those coins are call script. If I remember correctly, miners were paid in script coins and the script could only be redeemed at the coal mine company store you worked for