If you pay attention to this blog, you know that my father-in-law passed away a few weeks ago. Ted has driven back and forth to see his mother and deal with taking care of estate details since that time. Today is the fourth time he has made the five hour journey to visit - this time I was able to accompany him.
I absolutely adore my mother-in-law. She is a very humorous and intelligent woman. I love to spend time with her.
My in-laws are "collectors". They collect all sorts of things; camera equipment, books, stamps, among several other things. Today, we were going through the collection of coins; foreign coins, domestic coins, tokens and stuff like that. Not a fortune to be had, but it was fun to go through the small collection. There were silver dollars, half dollars, quarters, nickles, dimes, pennies; some of them silver - some of them not; some of them nickle, some of them not; some of them copper, some of them not. In fact, she had a handful of "wheat pennies" and Ted had looked and found that the 1943 copper wheat penny was worth anywhere between $20,000 to $40,000. I was really excited when I found five 1943 wheat pennies - but, alas and crap, they were not copper but were steal. Damn, thought I had stumbled across a virtual fortune for my mother-in-law, oh well.
One of the lessons I learned today was about tax stamps or tokens. Apparently, back in the day, they used these paper "tokens" to give change. You see, if you paid 3% sales tax on $1.25, the total would be $1.2875. If the total was rounded up, this would give an unfair profit to the merchant - if it were rounded down, it would give an unfair advantage to the purchaser. So, these tokens were given as change to the purchaser, who would then use the tokens for their next purchase to pay for their sales tax. Interesting. My mother-in-law had a few of these tokens from different areas of the midwest. She also had a "rations book" that were big during World War II. Because commodities like sugar, coffee and gasoline were in short supply, citizens were given ration books. This allowed them to purchase whatever was their rationed amount by using their ration stamps. It is absolutely interesting to see all the different things that she had kept and accumulated - in other words, collected.
Among the treasures and collections were a lot of different commemorative coins, tokens and things like that. There was an identification tag for a Yellow Cab in Kansas City, coins from the Kansas centennial, and a bunch of other things. But, my favorites by far, were the tokens from brothels - that is right my friends, from whorehouses, houses of ill repute, cathouses, bordellos, or whatever other names you can think of. From what I can tell, you would make your purchase through the madame or other point of sale and your token would be good for certain adventures. She had three of them, two of them were the same and one other one. I giggle and giggle when I think about what they said, the first one says "GOOD FOR ONE SCREW" and the other one said "BIG CATS ARE DANGEROUS" on the front and on the back, "BUT A LITTLE PUSSY NEVER HURT ANYONE". How hilarious!!!
Just wanted to share my little history lesson with y'all. Hope it was as entertaining to you as it was to me!!
I absolutely adore my mother-in-law. She is a very humorous and intelligent woman. I love to spend time with her.
My in-laws are "collectors". They collect all sorts of things; camera equipment, books, stamps, among several other things. Today, we were going through the collection of coins; foreign coins, domestic coins, tokens and stuff like that. Not a fortune to be had, but it was fun to go through the small collection. There were silver dollars, half dollars, quarters, nickles, dimes, pennies; some of them silver - some of them not; some of them nickle, some of them not; some of them copper, some of them not. In fact, she had a handful of "wheat pennies" and Ted had looked and found that the 1943 copper wheat penny was worth anywhere between $20,000 to $40,000. I was really excited when I found five 1943 wheat pennies - but, alas and crap, they were not copper but were steal. Damn, thought I had stumbled across a virtual fortune for my mother-in-law, oh well.
One of the lessons I learned today was about tax stamps or tokens. Apparently, back in the day, they used these paper "tokens" to give change. You see, if you paid 3% sales tax on $1.25, the total would be $1.2875. If the total was rounded up, this would give an unfair profit to the merchant - if it were rounded down, it would give an unfair advantage to the purchaser. So, these tokens were given as change to the purchaser, who would then use the tokens for their next purchase to pay for their sales tax. Interesting. My mother-in-law had a few of these tokens from different areas of the midwest. She also had a "rations book" that were big during World War II. Because commodities like sugar, coffee and gasoline were in short supply, citizens were given ration books. This allowed them to purchase whatever was their rationed amount by using their ration stamps. It is absolutely interesting to see all the different things that she had kept and accumulated - in other words, collected.
Among the treasures and collections were a lot of different commemorative coins, tokens and things like that. There was an identification tag for a Yellow Cab in Kansas City, coins from the Kansas centennial, and a bunch of other things. But, my favorites by far, were the tokens from brothels - that is right my friends, from whorehouses, houses of ill repute, cathouses, bordellos, or whatever other names you can think of. From what I can tell, you would make your purchase through the madame or other point of sale and your token would be good for certain adventures. She had three of them, two of them were the same and one other one. I giggle and giggle when I think about what they said, the first one says "GOOD FOR ONE SCREW" and the other one said "BIG CATS ARE DANGEROUS" on the front and on the back, "BUT A LITTLE PUSSY NEVER HURT ANYONE". How hilarious!!!
Just wanted to share my little history lesson with y'all. Hope it was as entertaining to you as it was to me!!
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