(1861-85) Civil War Store Card F-310-E-1a, Jefferson; Steinhart/1337 WI

Coin Details

Description

Fuld 310-E — store card of Jefferson; Steinhart/1337, Wisconsin. Wisconsin was a growing frontier state with Milwaukee as its largest commercial center, and its merchants issued tokens as practical solutions to the coin shortage. Many Civil War tokens share common reverse dies, as die sinkers paired merchant-specific obverses with stock patriotic or advertising reverses. Civil War tokens addressed a practical problem: the wartime disappearance of federal small change made daily transactions nearly impossible without private substitutes. Civil War tokens circulated alongside postage currency, fractional currency notes, and encased postage stamps as substitutes for the federal coins that had disappeared from commercial channels. The cent-sized format was chosen deliberately to match the federal Indian Head cent, the coin most conspicuously absent from daily commerce.

Rarity Notes

Copper strikings are generally the most common metal variant for Civil War store cards, as copper was the standard planchet material mimicking the federal cent. With 4 cataloged varieties, Jefferson; Jung/1226 was a limited producer of Civil War tokens.

Cross References

Fuld 310-E