8.1 Love Tokens
Love tokens are coins that have been engraved to commemorate an event or as a personal gift or memento. Generally engraved on one side only, love tokens were very popular in the late 19th century.
Usually made from a silver dime, love tokens on other denominations are scarce.
Love tokens are usually engraved with someone’s initials, a date, and/or an image. Varying in design from simple to elaborate, plain to enameled in color, they are as individualized as the patron
and the engraver. Most twenty-cent piece love tokens are engraved on the reverse, perhaps as a way to preserve the date associated with original coin.
All of the love tokens illustrated below were made using twenty-cent pieces as host coins.
Love tokens with initials are the most commonly encountered examples. Some love tokens are made with a hole to be included in jewelry.
Love tokens with initials
Often love tokens can be found with two or four holes. These pieces were generally part of bracelets that were disassembled and the love tokens sold individually.
Matching love tokens for “Mama” and “Papa”
Enameling adds highlighting and coloring to love tokens. Such examples are generally very intricate and quite scarce.
Enameled Love tokens
Occasionally love tokens are engraved with objects or images that are very personal and have special meaning to the owner. Such pieces are often intricately
engraved and are quite rare. Others can be crudely engraved or not engraved at all as if the artist made an error or was preparing coins for future engraving.
 Acorn with initials E.E. |
 Baseball or possibly an unfinished love token |
 Odd Fellows token |
Love Token showing a piano on the reverse
