Tom Kays submitted this interesting story of a recently discovered group of charge coin tokens. -Editor

The "SN" monogram is actually "NS" for Snellenberg's of Philadelphia.

"JAH" is the James A. Hearn Co, of New York, NY.

"CMF" has me stumped. I was unable to find it in Dence's book.

Often I'm just as perplexed by an E-Sylum query, but I recognized these pieces immediately. I collected charge coins intensely for a time and have a nice selection from around the U.S. and Canada. I even have a large collection of Pittsburgh charge coins by variety, something that isn't documented in any book or article I'm aware of.There is a predecessor to Alpert's book. The gentleman who popularized charge coins among token collectors is Ed Dence of Philadelphia. He published several editions of what became his. I wrote the index for one of the early editions.These are handmade affairs, comprising sets of photocopied or hand-drawn images of charge coins, organized by country, state, city, and issuer. Each was assigned a catalog number according to a system similar to U.S. transportation, Civil War and other tokens. I have the 1994 Fourth Edition (shown here), but don't think I have a copy of the Alpert book yet.-Editor