Expert: Jim Lawniczak - 1/10/2006

Question
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Followup To
Question -
MY dad worked for CTA Bus lines in Chicago. He brought us kids home Commemorative 1 cent coins, stamped with a bell on a 1976 1cent piece. The coin came with a pamplet that described the coin.
 My question is, I recieved 2 coins one was made with the wrong dtae.
All coins were 1976, but coin has 1979 on it. I have been looking every where to find the value of this coin.


Answer -
Hello, Lori, hard to tell what these are without seeing them.  I doubt if they are "coins" -- a coin is something made by a government to be used as money.  Sounds like a token and maybe a transportation token -- one to be used for transportation.  There is a whole group dedicated to collecting these -- they are called Vecturists and I think their organization is called the American Vecturist Organization.  

Unfortunately, with very rare exceptions, most tokens never come close to price levels of coins.  That's because there are millions of people collecting coins and it seems like tens but maybe hundreds of people collecting tokens.  It also makes it harder to find information about them

A couple ideas: 1. go to www.google.com and do a search for Vecturist and maybe some of the words that appear on your token or that are in the pamphlet (you don't say what those are).  Maybe you'll find a site that is selling similar items. 2. go to www.ebay.com and do a search that would describe the pieces (including the year -- particularly as to the 1979 piece).  Maybe there you'll find someone selling something similar.

Hope this helped, Jim Lawniczak
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Hello, Thanks for answering, but this is not a token,but a real 1 cent lincon penny.
 I can take a picture of take a picture of these twp pennies, and email them too you.

Answer
OK, I see now.  There are quite a lot of these with all sorts of things stamped on them -- sometimes a portrait of Kennedy looking at Lincoln and other things.  Here it sounds like someone stamped a bell on the two cents.  Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no aftermarket for these pieces and they really have no value (other than the cent).  The only possibility here would be the pamphlet -- that might have some value to someone.  Here you might try google or ebay with searches like, "penny stamped bell" or "cent stamped bell" or something like that and see if anything shows up, Jim