Bavarian modern age tokens and badges

While the tokens have an inherent value function, the badges are dominated by an identification function. For example, the imperial city of Nuremberg's personally engraved gate tokens allowed members of the city council to pass through the city gates even after they were closed. At the other end of the imperial city's social order, the needy identified themselves through alms badges in order to be able to profit from the city's distribution of bread for the poor.

The attendance tokens that were issued, for example, during council or court sessions are one special form. In most cases though there is a specific equivalent in the form of money, goods or services behind the tokens issued by the authorities, companies or private individuals. However, unlike money, these tokens can only be exchanged for clearly designated or at least narrowly defined equivalents. Tokens and badges must accordingly always be distinguished from coins, despite their formal similarities to coins. Like the emergency coins though, the tokens and badges serve superbly as a (sometimes only) source for reconstructing Bavaria's regional (economic) history. The best known token is probably the beer token. The beer token was not only issued by large breweries and inns but also by hotels, restaurants, cafés and pubs. As a result, the 19th and 20th century beer tokens not only reflect Bavaria's gastronomic diversity but also the occasions for beer consumption: beer tokens were understandably issued more often by the catering trade and various entertainment businesses, but also by student fraternities, officers' societies and teaching seminars. The consumer association tokens popular in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century in southern Germany were not only significant in terms of quantity. The metal consumer association tokens were issued as payment or receipt vouchers for the members. The tradition of issuing and paying for tokens has been partially preserved in Bavaria's beer and festival tents, not least in those at the Munich Oktoberfest. Other tokens in coin form that still exist today include admission, gaming and deposit tokens, while the guild, passing and customs tokens bear witness to bygone economic systems.

The other part collections of the "Coins, medals and coin-like objects from Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and the Palatinate in modern times" available on bavarikon

>> This collection is part of the holdings of "Coins, medals and coin-like objects from Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and the Palatinate in modern times" of the Staatliche Münzsammlung München (State Coin Collection Munich).