Let's Tell a Love Story

These beautiful coins are known as Love Tokens, which were wildly popular in the Victorian Era.  The exact origin of this practice is up for debate: some numismatists trace the history back to 13th century England and the practice of bending coins.  When asking a favorite saint for a favor, coins were bent and pledges were made as a physical token of the pledge made.  The practice of engraving coins took off during the late 1600’s through the 1800’s, when coins were engraved with everything from primitive to highly skilled techniques in equal measure.

Typically, the minted words and images were removed from the obverse side of the coin - the front of the coin, or what we call heads when we flip a coin as they are commonly decorated with the bust of a prominent person.  In some cases the reverse of the coin was used as the blank canvas for the embellishment, which is why you may see a love token of the same year with a different backside. While both sides of the coin are interesting, using the reverse side makes it difficult to determine the year in which the coins were minted.

While love tokens started off as gifts from a beau to his belle, their popularity extended far beyond these traditional boundaries to commemorate more than just romantic love. I have numerous love tokens in my collection that say Mama, and also Papa, Father, Brother, Uncle and Auntie.

Love tokens were executed on practically all denominations of coins in many countries.  According to the US Mint, the love token phenomenon caused a shortage of dimes during the peak of the craze.  Dimes were not a huge amount of money to throw away, thus their popularity. When other coins were used, the choice of coin communicated social and economic status:  gold coins and larger denominations of silver coins were a sign of the giver’s wealth, whereas nickels and pennies were seldom used as they were considered common due to their composition – nickel and copper versus silver or gold.

What I love most about these coins is the history behind them, even if I will never know what it is, I can use my imagination. The most mysterious coins are not the ones with names, but the ones with words or phrases.  Some of the best ones I have come across in my years of collecting include Excuse Me, Flirt, Pickles, Stories and Wild.

If these coins could talk… what stories they would tell!

xoxo, Samantha­