Telephone tokens were

token coin In numismatics, token coins or trade tokens are coin-like objects used instead of coins. The field of token coins is part of exonumia and token coins are token money. Their denomination is shown or implied by size, color or shape. They are of ...

s once widely used for making telephone calls from public telephones in place of ordinary coins. They were also sometimes used as a medium of exchange and as a collectible. Telephone tokens were once widely used in

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Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, and

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, but have since been largely superseded by telephone cards and credit cards. They were introduced during inflationary periods to avoid having to frequently change the coin slots on pay phones.

History

Phone tokens started in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, in the

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, where public phones would accept only tokens. Tokens were used in the U.S. until 1944, when they were eliminated and most of the tokens were melted down to make shell casings. The earliest-known telephone token dates from 1885, when it was produced for the PAN

Telephone Company A telecommunications company is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many t ...

in St. Louis, Missouri. Rather than being deposited in the phone, the token was sometimes given to an attendant or placed in a

coin A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by ...

box to gain access to the phone booth. The practice of using tokens and allowing their specific value to float with the going rate for a phone call eventually became the standard world-wide practice. This came in especially handy in European countries where currencies changed as one crossed national borders, but a token could still be used. It was also the practice for some restaurants to have their own tokens so that those bought at a different place could not be used at that business. In some countries, such as with Italian gettone, they were used informally as cash equivalents. Most telephone tokens are round and many have grooves.

References

{{Commonscat, Telephone tokens *Groenendijk, Henk A.: ''A Catalog of Telephone and Telegraph Tokens of the World''. Leiden 1989. *Targonsky, Paul: ''A Catalogue of Telephone Tokens of the World''. Published by the author. Meriden, Conn., 1968 *van Dam, Rik: ''A Catalogue of Telephone Tokens of the World''. A catalog in progress, started in 2016. www.telephonetokens.com Telephone services Telecommunications economics

History

See also

References