MOROCCO (1 of 2)
See more at... Morocco - Page 2 of 2
Telephone Tokens
My "PTT MAROC" telephone token of Morocco. (200 dpi)
Here is an old telephone token from Morocco. Notice on
the image, on the obverse, the cornucopia privy
mark of Monnaie de Paris, it is just below the letter "R". I have a few
recent French tokens with this privy mark, some pieces with a pair of
these.
On coins made by Monnaie de Paris, the cornucopia privy mark is always
accompanied
by a privy mark for the Engraver General (e.g. in recent years -
dolphin,
bee or horseshoe).
On the reverse of the token there are two round bottomed
horizontal grooves. Quite a number of telephone tokens (and other
machine
tokens) from other parts of the world also have grooves, some have
round-bottomed
groove and others flat-bottomed ones. (I have seen tokens with
"V"-Bottomed
grooves too, but not telephone tokens.) Only tokens have grooves of any
sort and never coins - so grooves are an easy way for discriminator
mechanisms
to distinguish between coins and tokens - and size, shape, spacing and
number of grooves are a useful way for the mechanisms to distinguish
between
one type of token and another. Grooves, of course, cannot be struck
onto
a coin - too much material would require to be displaced - it would
seem
that grooves are normal cast (and occassionally formed). The grooves on
the PTT MAROC tokens go nearly halfway through the thickness of the
token,
most grooved tokens I have seem to have grooves very close to half the
token thickness.
Around a year after getting my Moroccan telephone token above and got information of there actually being two varieties of this token type.
The two varieties of MAROC/PTT token. Horizontal
grooves
on reverse and
Vertical grooves on reverse. Image from Kenji Natsume.
(200dpi)
Of these two varieties only that with horizontal grooves on the
reverse
is detailed in "Catalog of Telephone and Telegraph Tokens", by H. A.
Groenendijk,
published January 1989. There it is listed as type A-1 for Morocco.
There is one other token type listed under Morocco in "Catalog of Telephone and Telegraph Tokens" it is the "AFTECO".
The "AFTECO" token. Image from Ciro Marta. (scaled to
200dpi)
See more at... Morocco - Page 2 of 2
This page started with info and image on the "PTT MAROC" at February
2004.
This page updated to show 2 varieties of the "PTT MAROC" token at
August
2005.
This page expanded with the addition of AFTECO token image and
information at May 2013.