Lindenmueller Civil War Tokens — A Deeper Look

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Summary

Lindenmueller Civil War tokens, issued by a New York bar owner, are often believed to be substitutes for one-cent coins during the Civil War. However, evidence suggests they were not intended as currency, but rather as tokens for admission to Lindenmueller’s theater, The Odeon, or for beer. The tokens’ larger size and unique design, along with the lack of any monetary claims, support this interpretation.

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A tiny piece of New York History

​Anthony (Tony/Pcunix) Lawrence 👀​

Many years ago I spotted the token shown above at a coin show. It’s a fairly common token, but I had not seen it previously. I thought it looked interesting, so I bought it.

Curious to know more about it after bringing it home, I consulted “A Guide Book of United States Tokens and Medals” by Katherine Jaeger. It is listed there as NY-630AQ-1a but there was not much else to tell. Googling “NY-630AQ-1a” gave me more information, but I wasn’t truly convinced that it was accurate.

The most common tale is what Wikipedia repeats: Lindenmueller owned a bar in New York and, because of hard money hoarding during the American Civil War, issued these one cent tokens as substitutes.

There was nothing new about merchants issuing their own tokens for advertising purposes. Not was there anything new about replacing money with tokens. In the years that preceded and overlapped the depression that came with the Panic of 1837, hard money had been hoarded. Merchants had produced tokens that could be used as one cent coins, with an implied promise of redemption in the future.

Lindenmueller was not the first to issue tokens. Cincinnati merchants began this in 1862, with H. A. Ratterman said to be the first to do so. Other than in Jaeger’s book, I cannot find an image of that particular 1862 issue. The obverse looks very much like the Indian Head cent of the same year.

Lindenmueller’s token was different. Almost all tokens issued by merchants at that time were like Ratterman’s, the same size as the Indian Head Cent. The Lindenmueller token was larger, but smaller than the Large Cents that were produced until 1857. It was also larger than the Two Cent coin that would be introduced in 1864. It seemed unlikely that this was ever meant to pass as a one cent coin.

As noted, many merchant tokens of that period had designs that mimicked the then current Indian Head Cent, but Lindenmueller’s token mimicked nothing. The small merchant tokens also often were quite blatant in their imitation, having wording like “NOT ONE CENT” on the reverse to imply value while skirting counterfeiting laws. The Lindenmueller token had either a beer mug or ODEON on the reverse. Nothing implied or promised monetary value.

Lindenmueller had a theatre attached to his bar named The Odeon; it seemed not unreasonable to me that the ODEON version gave admission to the theatre, while the beer mug token might have bought you beer.

Update December 2023: The Odeon tokens are harder to find and are smaller, about the size of a quarter. These are R-3, 500–2000 estimated. I recently found a nice one to add to my collection.

I couldn’t find what a glass of beer there might have cost in 1863, but I did find this 1866 menu at the Library of Congress. It shows a price of 50 cents in Washington DC. Prices may have been higher there (it may have been an upscale restaurant), but probably not fifty times higher. My guess was that beer probably cost at least a nickel or so and that was the nominal value of this token.

Next, we are told that these were used for streetcar fare. That may be, but again, did that cost one cent? Google didn’t help me, although I did find a reference to it costing a nickel in 1888 San Francisco. But that’s not what really bothered me about that part of the story. Wikipedia and other sources assert that the New York Third Avenue Railroad company eventually asked Lindenmueller to redeem the tokens. That seemed very unlikely to me. Why would a streetcar conductor accept it?

Wikipedia goes on to claim that “Incidents such as these eventually forced the government to intervene.” I could not imagine why or how. These tokens didn’t look like coins, made no claim to be coins, so how could the government object to them? That the government cracked down on the smaller tokens with their comparable designs and devious mottos is obvious, but it seemed unlikely that this token would have been targeted.

I went digging deeper and eventually found this article which supports my thoughts about this and then some. At “Gustavus Lindenmueller: The Myth, The Man, The Mystery”, the author provides more evidence than I was able to dig up:

He also points out that Lindenmueller was known for being litigious yet there is no record of him challenging any counterfeiting charge.

According to his references, the laws that were passed in 1864 certainly didn’t seem to be anything that would affect Lindenmueller’s tokens. He states:

All of this agreed with and seemed to justify my initial thought that this token was not intended to be a coin, was not used as such, and that Gustavus Lindemuller was not accused of counterfeiting because of these tokens.

References:

​Gustavus Lindenmueller: The Myth, The Man, The Mystery​

​A Guide Book of United States Tokens and Medals (Official Red Book)​

​Wikipedia Civil War Tokens​

​History of Street Cars​

​Man who killed Civil War Tokens​

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