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Wooden Nickels

On December 5, 1931, the Citizen's Bank of Tenino, Washington (pronounced 10-9-OH) failed and created a shortage of money. This left the merchants of the area unable to get change without traveling about 30 miles over mountainous roads in automobiles ill suited to that purpose, on roads that were built for horses and mules to traverse. The average round trip was about four hours. Much too long for merchants to be gone from their stores. A meeting of the Chamber of Commerce resulted in the local newspaper printing up the first issue of wooden money in the United States. (See my #WN001)

In 1933, Blaine, Washington issued round wooden coins when their bank failed. These were the first issues of wooden money in the U.S.

Several other places, mostly in the Pacific North-West, issued wooden money after that. Some followed the flat format of Tenino and others used round pieces. The Century of Progress in Chicago in 1933 was the first place to use wooden money pieces as souvenirs. Several issues were made - all round. Some are the size of a silver dollar and others are about three inches in diameter. In 1934 a new use for wooden nickels was found-a combination of advertising for civic celebrations and providing souvenirs of the celebration. Binghamton NY was one of first places to embrace this concept. Wood continued to be used to enhance civic celebrations such as centennials through the mid 1930’s and really started to be cranked out in 1938 when the J. R. Rogers Company of Fostoria, Ohio obtained a copyright on their design for wooden money. While the Rogers Company had competition and the competition also issued wooden money, woods produced for Rogers continue to be the most readily found.

Just when the adage "Don’t take any Wooden Nickels!" was added to the American language is unclear, but the reasons are easy to understand. First of all, each wood had an expiration date and generally even a specific final redemption time. If you were in a possession of a handful of wooden nickels that expired at noon today and your best customer came through the door at five minutes to noon, it would be difficult to get to centennial headquarters to cash them in. Many Wooden Nickels also said they had to be unbroken, and the rectangular "Flats" were pretty fragile.
Probably the Rogers Company’s use of wooden money should be studied as one of the great marketing schemes of the 20th Century. They had the wooden pieces printed up sometime prior to the actual celebration. They then sold the woods to area merchants for face value and the merchant in turn gave the Wooden Nickels, Wooden Dimes, and Wooden Quarters to their customers in change. The woods usually carried the time, date and place of the celebration. So in effect you had paid to take home an advertisement for the event.

The above history is courtesy of the Wooden Nickel Historical Museum in San Antonio, Texas. Click on the logo above to go to that outstanding site.

For many years I owned and published a trade journal for the printing industry. On several occasions over the years I went to San Antonio and interviewed The Elbee Company, an associate of the Wooden Nickel Historical Museum. It was fascinating. Walking into the production area was like walking into a 19th century print shop. There were several old C&P clamshell presses that had been modified by the owner to automatically feed the blank wooden nickels. The blanks were poured into a tube that had the inside diameter a tad larger than the size of the nickel to be printed. Every time the clamshell opened a blank would drop onto the platen of the press. An engraving of the copy to be printed was in the presses chase and when the clamshell closed, the image would be printed on the nickel. I don't recall the speed, but it was pretty fast. The ones I saw had already been printed with a standard image on one side, but if there was custom copy for the second side, he would go through the same process - making sure that the blank side of all dropped into the tube all faced the same direction.

On one occasion I visited a different shop that had developed a different way of printing the wooden nickels. This printer had a rather large chase or holder for the nickels and arranged the blanks in rows and columns, filling the chase. He then would burn a screen for silk screen printing with the images. Say there were 10 rows of 10 blanks in the chase - or 100 nickels. The screen would have 100 registered images. He would then put the chase in the screen printing press and print all 100 at the same time. Using this process, the printer could print two or more colors by burning a screen for the additional colors and repeating the process.

I am going to find new homes for my collection.  My collection is not large, but I have got some nice items - many of which are the bill shape rather than the traditional rounds. I've pictured many below.

Some of these were produced by John B. Rogers Productions of Fostoria, Ohio. At one time Rogers was the world's largest producer of pageants and celebrations. He printed these in various denominations - some numbered and occasionally those that were not numbered. These "wooden nickels" could be used for admission, food, rides, games, etc. and were just like "real" money during the event. Once the wooden nickel had been spent, it was broken and returned to the visitor. Unbroken ones could be later redeemed at a participating bank. I find it interesting that some note in the corners they have a value of "5" but below is says "one wooden nickel." Others show a value of 5 and below they say "five wooden nickels."

When I had my printing company from 1959 to 1995, I always had at least one old letterpress. All of the ones I had dated from the late 1800's and all were hand-fed. While my letterpress department was not much of a profit center, it was always my favorite equipment in my shop. I would often print business cards on East Texas pine for the loggers in the area and also did a few other wooden business cards and wooden post cards for a variety of customers. A Michigan company, Cards of Wood, has a large variety of beautiful wood veneers that were suitable for my press. I only printed one souvenir "wooden nickel" in my some four decades in the business - one for a special exhibit at the Houston Zoo. Unfortunately I do not have a sample of that.

If interested in any of these, please contact me at cy@hotlinecy.com and make an offer. I have no idea how to price them.

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Cy Stapleton - info@cytreasures.com - or jack@jackalope.us, Box 151107, Lufkin, TX 75915-1107 - (936) 676-6375