Token - Thorbecke's Smoking Bear ND

Reverse

Inner circle containing scroll at top, 12-line inscription interspersed with numbers and a bracket, lowest line curved. Lettering around outside

Script: Latin

Lettering:
"REALLY GOOD AND CHEAPER THAN OTHERS" TOB. TRADE REV. 9 OCTOBER 80 *
MAKING BY MACHINE ENABLES US TO OFFER
10 EXQUISITE VIRGINIA OR TURKISH } FOR 4D.
20 DO. . . . . . FOR 8D.
BEST RICE PAPER NEATER & CHEAPER THAN HAND MADE
PRIZE AT MELBOURNE EXHIBITION

Translation: TOB. TRADE REV. = Tobacco Trade Review award: 9/10/1880

Edge

Plain

Comment

Thorbecke's brass advertising token undated.
Seen at times in Australia and is listed in a Queensland catalogue along with another three reverse types.
'The Times, London, Monday February 9 1880; Smoke Thorbecke's machine made 'Monopoly' cigarettes. London, 1881.' 'National Library of New Zealand - as paper ephemera, and there was a German company A H Thorbecke Co Mannheim also tobacco manufacturers. It appears that this token was issued by a London company, but mostly turn up in the Antipodes.'
 The cigarettes were made in Great Britain but available in the colonies. Although London made, these cigarettes seem to have been sold to the Colonial & Empire market.
 Perversely the bear is smoking a pipe rather than a cigarette, so it's obviously a very independently-minded bear. The token is about the size of a contemporary British penny, 30.5mm in diameter.

 Another example: