token

Toll tokens minted for the New Jersey Highway Authority (NJHA) for use on its Garden State Parkway in the 1980s all had the year "1952" stamped on them, 1952 being the year the NJHA was established. With coins the convention is that they are stamped with the year of minting, but that convention wasn't applied to Garden State Parkway toll tokens. (see picture) We've been wrestling with this after we carried an advertisement for a 1952 token.

We're wondering: were we conned by a guy seeking to sell to collectors a 1952 New Jersey Highway Authority token for the Garden State Parkway? We wrote up his advertisement Feb 7 here:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3988

A New Jersey reader has just told us he only remembers tokens coming into widespread use in about 1990.

Jerry Stutts now 78 has always been a collector, he tells us, but he's gradually selling off collectibles to supplement his social security income. He wonders if any readers are interested in buying from him a 1952 Garden State Parkway token. Dated 1952 it must be one of the first tokens to be used in  automatic coin machines (ACMs) anywhere because we know the Garden State Parkway was where they were first deployed, and it was opening in stages around that time.