Token - Telephone Test Token - Post Office GPO/HPK (5 Cents; incuse letters) ND

Reverse

Script: Latin

Lettering: P

Edge

Plain

Comment

These pieces were issued by the South African Post office for use by employees in testing public telephones and making emergency calls. There are several variants of these pieces spanning multiple denominations of both pre-decimal and decimal currency. Each variant was the same size, shape and material as its equivalent circulation coin so denominations can be attributed reliably to these pieces.

The GPO and HPK on this piece are abbreviations for "General Post Office" and the the Afrikaans equivalent, "Hoof Poskantoor", respectively. This piece is not listed in Hern's Handbook on South African Tokens (Second Edition 2009) but it differs from #442u on page 107 only in having incuse rather than relief lettering. Hern observes for other tokens in this series that they do occur with incuse lettering.

These pieces were often painted in pale lime green, dark green, blue, red or brown. In an interview, a former post office worker explained that the paint was applied in order to separate these more easily from the circulation coins when emptying the cash boxes of public telephones.