Circulated coins of St. Barthélemy listed as token

To begin with, this is has nothing to do with "oh I must reach 300 countries, so I 'create' more countries" thing. This is simply a question, since Numista isn't the only one to "blame" here.

The island of Saint Bathélemy, today part of Smaller Antilles, and is a French Overseas Territory. From 1784 until 1878 the island was a Swedish colony, and then sold to France. The Swedish inheritage can be seen in the coat of arms where the Swedish three crowns can be seen. The name of the capital, Gustavia, is named after King Gustav III of Sweden.

In 1988 the island, in co-operation with Sweden, issued two coins, a 50 Francs/Riksdaler and 500 Francs/Riksdaler. The coins were legal tender in St. Barthélemy and in a few towns in Scania, the southernmost province in Sweden.
In 1993 a 100 Francs/Riksdaler coin was issued, and in 1994 a 200 Francs/Riksdaler coin was issued. Both with the same design as the 1988 issue. I don't know if these coins were circulating as well.

Krause lists all of these coins in its Unusual World Coin catalog, all with X-numbers, and here on Numista they are listed as tokens. But I reckon, since they were legal tender, they shouldn't be listed as token but in the regular CaT list.

Link for the lazy: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces53969.html

But it looks like these round metal objects were created by local governments, which unfortunately makes them only equivalent to any other municipal token. (Yes, the placement of "France - cities" in the list of actual countries is ridiculous.) They can't be coins because they do not have approval from the highest levels of national government.


pictured: something that is not a coin from Northern Ontario

OK, well this is where it all gets compliacted.
I do not know if there is an equivalent word in English, but in Swedish these kind of coins are called "lokalmynt", which litteraly means local coin(s). Lokalmynt are legal tender in a limited area (like a city or an island (the Åland coins could be counted as lokalmynt)) and for a shorter period time (everything from just one day to several years).

However, there are also lokalmynt which are/were valid in 2 countries (like the St. Barthélemy coins). So we're not talking about telephone tokens or subway tokens, but coins you can actually buy food and electronics with in regular stores, in a city or on an island. The fact still remains though, that it's neither issued by the government nor the king, so I guess it's somewhere between a token and a coin. But maybe you can compare it to this one?

The definitions of a lokalmynt (local coin) are:
1) Issued in 1977 or later in Sweden, and not the government or the King.
2) The issuer has released lokalmynt (local coin)
3) Lokalmynt is embossed on the coin
4) A denomination (Kr, Daler, Riksdaler, Franc, Hjuro,..) and with a specified duration
5) Supports a association/county/city and has a contingent value on the market

Claim no. 1 in combination with 2, 3, 4 or 5, indicates that it is a lokalmynt.

The info about lokalmynt did I get from here. It's in Swedish, but some parts are poorly translated to English (probably through Google Translate or Bing, or something similar).

I am pretty familiar with modern local tokens struck for municipalities, towns, and cities - more than a thousand have been issued in Canada since 1960, of which I have maybe 370 unique types. So, yes, there is an equivalent in other countries. Anyway, this familiarity leads me to believe that, although local tokens may be highly collectible, they are not actually coins. They were not issued out of necessity, either - they were issued for use as souvenirs and novelties.

In my view, the fact that this local token was produced for use on a small barely-autonomous island does not differentiate it at all from any other local token issued for any other barely-autonomous jurisdiction.

Treating local tokens as coins is a really slippery slope.


Tokens from Washington and Hawaii - neither of which are represented in the Numista catalog


Tokens from British Columbia and Manitoulin Island - neither of which are represented in the Numista catalog

Fair enough. I was just wondering, since the ½ Penny / 1 Sou is listed in Canada Provinces with the note Token. So I reckon it should be treated the same way as the St. Barthélemy coins. If the coins you posted were legal tender as well, I guess it's about time to add a third category next to Coins and Tokens, called Local coins. Just a thought though.

Quote: "ngdawa"​Fair enough. I was just wondering, since the ½ Penny / 1 Sou is listed in Canada Provinces with the note Token. So I reckon it should be treated the same way as the St. Barthélemy coins. If the coins you posted were legal tender as well, I guess it's about time to add a third category next to Coins and Tokens, called Local coins. Just a thought though.

​The token you linked is entirely different because of its historical status. In 1840, nobody knew whether they should be using British or American coins in Canada, and confusion led to coin shortages. So private bank tokens began to circulate out of necessity. In 1840, coins still contained precious metal, so as long as tokens were made of good copper or good silver, they were just as good as real coins. (But, if someone moved this clearly labeled "Bank Token" to the Tokens section, I probably wouldn't complain.)

Local tokens don't circulate out of necessity - they circulate for fun. In 1840, there was pretty much no tourist industry, which is not the case today.

From what you are describing, since it was used as local currency, not just as a souvenir, in addition to being issued by a collaboration of Swedish and local authorities, these coins should be listed as provincial coinage. Which country they should fall under depends on whether they were under Swedish control or French control. There is a possible snag, which is that if the island was under French control, but it was the Swedish government who helped issue the coins.

To be honest I don't know who's behind the struck of these coins, since one side is Swedish and the other French. I also don't know if these coins were legal tender somewhere in France as well.