hi all....iwas at the local antique store the other day and found a small hoard of tax tokens from louisiana,mississippi,and alabama.i bought all of them 5 for a dollar,....thing is i dont even know what these things are,so if anyone could elaborate on these tokens it would surely help...

These are relics from the early part of the last century, they were actually quite common in the South and even Midwest. Examples can also be found from New Mexico(about the most attractive of the lot) Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Utah etc.

Basically it amounted to a means to pay a sales tax when sales taxes were not charged in whole cents, but rather in fractions. So a lot of the tokens you will see were for 1, 2, and 5 mills, which were 1/10th 2/10th and 5/10ths of a cent.

If I remember correctly Missouri was one of the last states still using them, and their last tokens were green plastic ones in the mid 1960's at least according to one of my relatives living there.

Oklahoma used a white heavy cardboard type (which I have some of these "off center" and "clipped"). As for missouri, I believe they had red tokens as well. And I second the notion that Arizona had the best looking of these.

Wa. State were aluminun with a hole in the center. If you would like one let me know.

I got a lot of those. . . pretty much worthless. . . But fun to collect. . I even got the green one and some of the paper ones plus a Canadian meat token.