What is it? Game 66: Strange Square Coin

By Alex in Money & Finance, What Is It on Jun 11, 2008 at 7:41 am

This week’s collaboration with What is it? blog brings us this strange looking coin from the State of Illinois. It has a specific purpose – can you tell us what it is for?

Place your guess in the comment section – no prize this week, so you’re playing for fun and bragging rights only.

For more guessing fun, check out What is it? blog. Good luck!

Update 6/16/08 – The answer is: sales tax token, as explained on American Tax Token Society’s webpage:

Merchants had to pay sales tax to the state on the total amount of sales made by the merchant during each day’s sales. You can imagine that if the sales tax rate is 3% and a child buys a 10c piece of candy there is no way to collect the three-tenths of one cent. If you rounded down that meant that the merchant could not collect anything for the tax. If you rounded up the state was gaining 7 tenths of a cent on every 10 cent sale. You can see that if the merchant sold 100 pieces of candy he was loosing 30 cents a day in tax revenues to the state, so the token was born. This allowed the merchant to take 11 cents for the first piece of candy and give change back in mills. The next time you wanted to buy a 10c candy you could present the merchant with the 10c and a token and complete the transaction. This allowed the merchant to collect the sales tax on each transaction.

Congrats to drewlambert02 who got it right – and I have to say that Randall’s entry was one of the funniest I’ve read in a while!


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  1. drewlambert02
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 7:48 am

    It is a sales tax coin, used to collect sales tax and issued in fractions to reflect taxes on small purchases.

  2. Adam Stanhope
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 7:52 am

    It’s a token that can be exchanged for one and one-eighth of some commodity – not one and one-eighth cents. I’m going to guess a loaf of bread.

  3. Adam Stanhope
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 7:54 am

    err – one-eighth should have read one-half

  4. reyalpdemannu
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 8:12 am

    It’s a retailer’s occupation token.

  5. Mr. Clean
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 8:16 am

    I think it is a standard unit of weight used on scales. This one is 1 and a half ounces.

  6. streetattack
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 9:00 am

    yeah, I was a little late to post, but it is a retailers occupation token

  7. giltwist
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 9:53 am

    It’s a Square Meal token. In a time when dinner would cost you 50 cents, this token valued at 1.50 would pay for all three meals in a day. Hence the phrease three square meals a day.

  8. Randall
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 10:02 am

    Sorry folks, it looks like a coin but neatorama is playing a trick on you. Its actually a manhole cover, size 1.5. The Illinois state highways drainage act of 1947 oddly put the supervision of water transportaion conuits into the jurisdiction of the department of finance. Expecting to yurn it over to department of highways in the next legislative session, the DOF asked for the loan of Highway Dept equipment and supplies, including manhole covers. The D of H refused and in spite the dept of finance created their own square manhole covers, so that dept of H would have to replace them with the normal round covers. They never did. Illinois is a strange place, I was born there.

  9. Howard
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    It looks like my Christmas bonus last year.

  10. gwcarver
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Drew is right. That is a sales tax token issued so that merchants could make change for a penny, which was still worth something back in the 1920′s and ’30′s when these were issued.

  11. ukanduit
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Its a tax token. Its value is 1 1/2 mills.

  12. felipe Venancio
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    It is used to control some weight

  13. Jaxx
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    It’s a mass transit token equal to $1.50usd

  14. Moon
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    A marijuana tax token?

  15. redphone
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    I love how everyone is so certain and is taking on the task of educating the masses.

  16. redphone
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    p.s. a quick look on the blog shows that it is indeed the size of a coin. (a dime, in fact.)

    Manhole cover indeed! :D

  17. Adam Stanhope
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    Hey!

    Everybody who *amazingly* came up with “retailers’ occupation token” need to work a little bit harder.

    If you’re going to use Google to get an answer for one of these, AS I FREELY ADMIT I DID IN THIS CASE, you need to expend a little bit of extra effort to conceal that fact.

    OK, what exactly is a “retailers’ occupation token?” Beats the hell out of me.

    Obfuscation is the Google-cheater’s best friend.

  18. reyalpdemannu
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    drewlambert02 got it right, Adam Stanhope. I have about 10 of these coins given to me by my grandfather, they’re worth a little more than a dollar today. They were valued in milles, ie the token pictured was worth US$.0015
    Illinois thought it would be a good idea to collect sales tax in amounts less than a penny. It was like the Office Space rounded transaction scheme, only state government sponsored.
    kudos for acting self-righteous, though.

  20. Betty
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    The Feds decided to tax marijuana and several states issued tokens to charge tax. That was required for use or sale of the product.

  21. Rose
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    I think it is currency called a mille or mille and may relate to items as sales taxes. Not every state had them. but Illinois did!

  22. Rose
    Jun 11th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    OOPS! Should read mill or mille not same thing 2x!

  24. Chris
    Jun 12th, 2008 at 12:16 am

    it’s to add to postage

  25. Jim
    Jun 12th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Those who said “sales tax token” are correct, and those commenting on “mills” or fractions of cents should be awarded extra points.

    The best explanation I’ve found for these is at http://www.taxtoken.org/faq.htm.

    Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the heading “Why and how they were used?” and read to learn more.


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