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Found a old token with the golden umax!!!!
- Thread starter Hank68
- Start date
It looks to be a 1 mil Alabama tax token from the 1930's, but it's more than an old token. The two holes indicates it was converted to a "whizzer" that was a cherished toy a child played with. I've found hundreds of the old tax tokens, but only two that were made into a wizzers. Good find
. I found the Alabama tax token in the photo here in town recently, from what I can see of yours it looks to be the same.
. I found the Alabama tax token in the photo here in town recently, from what I can see of yours it looks to be the same.
REVIER
Well-known member
I found 2 when I lived in Alabama.
Did some research on these and this is an odd item but a cool piece of history.
http://users.pullman.com/fjstevens/tokens/taxinfo.html
http://www.taxtoken.org/timeline.pdf
Only 12 states used these, and the idea was that by using these neither the customer nor the retailer would be on the losing end of the transaction when the price of an item with sales tax came out to fractions of a cent...which happened a lot.
I have a friend who asked his 85 year old father about these when I showed him mine because he worked in a small retail store in Tennessee back in the day when he was a kid.
Even though that state never issued these, they circulated all over the south and all retailers were forced to deal with them.
He told us it turns out, these were just a bad idea all around.
Most people hated them because it was just more coins you had to carry around when you bought stuff, and all retailers hated them because none of the cash registers at the time had a slot to hold these things.
Also, you had to do some quick math in your head to figure out how to make all transactions come out even.
They were produced for a short time by those 12 states, soon after went out of favor and were not used much, and then were eventually outlawed by all the states that issued them.
Like I said...a very cool piece of history.
Great find!
Especially one that was converted to be a toy.
Did some research on these and this is an odd item but a cool piece of history.
http://users.pullman.com/fjstevens/tokens/taxinfo.html
http://www.taxtoken.org/timeline.pdf
Only 12 states used these, and the idea was that by using these neither the customer nor the retailer would be on the losing end of the transaction when the price of an item with sales tax came out to fractions of a cent...which happened a lot.
I have a friend who asked his 85 year old father about these when I showed him mine because he worked in a small retail store in Tennessee back in the day when he was a kid.
Even though that state never issued these, they circulated all over the south and all retailers were forced to deal with them.
He told us it turns out, these were just a bad idea all around.
Most people hated them because it was just more coins you had to carry around when you bought stuff, and all retailers hated them because none of the cash registers at the time had a slot to hold these things.
Also, you had to do some quick math in your head to figure out how to make all transactions come out even.
They were produced for a short time by those 12 states, soon after went out of favor and were not used much, and then were eventually outlawed by all the states that issued them.
Like I said...a very cool piece of history.
Great find!
Especially one that was converted to be a toy.
reddirtfisher
New member
I find those things a lot in Oklahoma. I even found an unusual copper "5" tax token once. They are fun to find.In the almost 43 years I've been detecting I've found a huge number of the aluminum 1 mil tokens, including quite a few from Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee that somehow made it to northeast Mississippi, but only six of the 5 mil brass/copper tokens. The one in the photo was number 6, found two weeks ago at an old homesite behind the library here in town as were the coins, old rouge box and whatzit in the photo. The 5 mil tokens I've found were all in relatively good condition, but almost all of the aluminum 1 mil tokens were seriously damaged by the high acid content in the ground here.
