From the archives: Weir & Larminie recessed Tokens and Stamps
March 31, 2026 | Featured
During the Civil War, the United States experienced a severe shortage of currency. To address this, several monetary substitutes emerged: patriotic tokens, merchant tokens and notes, fractional notes, and so on. Postage stamps even served as currency, either in their regular form, as notes exchangeable for stamps, or as embedded postage stamps. Many American merchants and industrialists took advantage of this situation to order such items from John Gault, the inventor of the patented process.
From Coins and Canada