Token - Labor - Religion ND

Reverse

Palm or Fern Tree

Script: Latin

Lettering:
RELIGION
THE
THREE
GRANDEST
TRUTHS
OF
UNIVERSAL
RELIGION
ARE
THE FATHERHOOD
OF GOD
THE
BROTHERHOOD
OF MAN
AND
PROGRESSIVE
IMMORTALITY

Edge

Plain

Comment

This Medal, from Cole's Book Arcade, is one of a series of medals offering maxims and proverbs issued by E.W. Cole at his Book Arcade. He called the medals 'little missionaries for the spread of educative knowledge' (Dean, 1988, p.36).
Note: there are three similar medals that have this obverse and reverse but different dies: D54; D55 (D56); and D57 (D58).

Both the D54 and D55 obverse has the I of the first IT over B of BLESSING.

 The D57 obverse has the I of the first IT over BL of BLESSING.

The D54 reverse has the First frond  pointing to T of THE

The D55 and D57 reverse has the First frond pointing to T of THREE

According to Sydney Endacott, an employee of Cole, customers were charged three pence for these medals (which he prefers to call tokens) which, when the Arcade was particularly busy, gave them admission to the second-hand books gallery where the orchestra played. Each medal could be exchanged for thee pence worth of goods, but most were kept. The pierced ones were sometimes worn as pendants or on pocket watch chains. The medals served as perpetual advertisements of the Arcade (Victorian Historical Magazine, February 1962). George Dean suggests that the medals were also given in change at Christmas time, and could be used to operate amusement machines (presumably including the symphonion and hens, although these only required one penny to operate).

Cole had his first medal struck in 1879 and his last one about 1903. The medals were variously gilded, silvered or bronzed, replicating the coinage then circulating, or plated with nickel or white metal. The medal blanks were usually made of copper or brass, but some might have been bronze; aluminium was also sometimes used. In all, perhaps 300,000 medals were struck, in 97 types. Only 50 types are known to have circulated (George Dean, 1988, A Handbook on E.W. Cole: His Book Arcade, Tokens and Medals).