Collection shows affinity for Shreveport history
Leonard Gresens deals with modernday currency through his day job at Cornerstone Financial Services, but his real interest is collecting a looselydefined currency from another time: tokens.
The most appealing thing about tokens to Gresens, he said, is the history behind them. Tokens have been widely used in Shreveport and North Louisiana back to the late 19th century, and their legacy is a widely-collected world of variety in the token world.
“I have found that this is a big deal with a lot of other collectors,” Gresens said.
Just a glance at the long category list of collectible tokens or tickets include those from domino and pool halls, saloons, brothels, wooden nickels (used as advertisements), casinos and festivals, and gaming tokens from amusement parks and arcades. Still more categories are bakery tokens, dairy tokens, ice tokens, picker tokens (like cotton or strawberries) and lumber tokens.
Some banks even issued tokens in the form of encased cents with slogans like, “Who said we don’t give out samples?” Every collector has their favorites and Gresens prefers to concentrate on tokens from different categories originating in North Louisiana.
Tokens differ from regular currency in the way they were issued and used.
“Tokens played a very important part in the early commerce of our country,” Gresens said.
“Local mom and pops would never have been able to make it without the help of issuing tokens in the business. I would venture to say that by 1900, most businesses contributed in one way or the other by bringing tokens into use. It was economically a good move.
“At the time when these tokens were used, most general store or drug store merchants didn’t have a safe full of money to make change,” Gresens said. “Most operated on a shoestring. By issuing tokens as change, they guaranteed a repeat customer later. And by having money up front and basically credit issued out, they could buy more merchandise.”
Other types of tokens include those issued by plantation owners who often paid their help with tokens.
“Most plantation owners had one or two cash crops they could cash in on in late spring and early summer,” Gresens said. “There was no cash flow during the winter months, but he had workers who were with him all year long and would expect to be paid. So during the months when cash was scarce, he would pay out in tokens to be used at a commissary or local store, which would later settle up with the plantation owner.
Gresens’ obsession with tokens grew out of his coin collection he’d been working on since childhood.
“When I was in college, the coin collection that was in the bottom of my dresser was a gold mine,” he said. “So I ended up selling most of the good stuff. I was left with a few items, such as medals and a Shreveport Trolley token.”
That one trolley token was from back when Gresens had ridden the trolley to school as a child. He decided to research the token and came across a brief guide to token collecting by a Bossier collector, Eddy Hill, called “A Tentative Guide to Shreveport Exonumia.”
Gresens’ discovered his little trolley token was listed in the book so he just held on to it for awhile. Then, when (the late) city historian Eric Brock wrote an article about the tokens used in Shreveport commerce, Gresens began searching them out in earnest.
At first the hunt was restricted primarily to area coin shops. “Then this thing called eBay came around,” Gresens said. “Now about 1,000 tokens later, I’m hooked.”
Every collection has its rare examples but Gresens maintains, “Rare is a relative term. You just don’t know who’s got what out there and whether there is a hoard lying in wait to be found. Probably my hardest to find is the Meridian Fertilizer Factory Toll Bridge token. Very few are known to exist. But with that said, the article Eric [Brock] wrote about the
Shreveport High School lunch token was at one time considered to be only one or two known pieces. Then when they dug up the land where the city jail is today, the old site of Shreveport High School, a number of them were found by Eric. He gave me probably 20 to 25 of them. So you never know.”
There also appears to be little consistency with pricing. “There’s a guy in New Orleans and another guy over in Mississippi who have more money than sense. They bid them up a lot on eBay.
It’s the old saying, whatever a buyer is willing to buy for and a seller is willing to sell for.”
Gresens said the best way to start collecting tokens is to contact someone who is already doing it.
“Finding one specialty to get started will help, too,” he said. “I started trying to get all of the Louisiana tokens and quickly found out that was going to take mortgaging the house. So I now specialize in North Louisiana, especially Caddo and Bossier parishes. Then flea markets, estate sales, antique shops, eBay, coin shops, friends and family – you’d be surprised what’s in junk drawers.”
“Now when I travel I’ll stop in coin shops and inquire,” Gresens added. “Most of the time they don’t have anything I need, but it’s the hunt that makes it fun. In January, I went to Houston and I stopped in one shop and asked the guy if he might have tokens from Louisiana. He said he didn’t but I was free to look through his binders of tokens. I ended up picking up about six or seven Shreveport tokens I didn’t have in my collection.”
Gresens enjoys showing his collection to others, including attendees of the Shreveport Coin Club’s annual Coin Show in July. He enjoys speaking about tokens to groups hoping to generate some interest and understanding about the impact tokens played in North Louisiana history.
“But mainly, it’s that Holy Grail thing in the back of your mind,” he admitted. “I’m heading to Omaha in a couple of weeks. I’ve already checked out coin shops to go to. Who knows, there could be something up there. But, then, you wonder, how did it make it all the way up here?” – Susan Reeks
