UNITED STATES: AE Hard Times Token (10.87g), 1837, Rulau-HT 33, Whitman-11-530a, Unc, 28mm, tortoise carrying safe inscribed SUB TREASURY with "1837 / FISCAL AGENT" below and. EXECUTIVE / EXPERIMENT around // donkey running left with I FOLLOW / IN THE above and STEPS / OF MY below with ILLUSTRIOUS / PREDECESSOR (a phrase used in Van Buren's inaugural speech) around, plain edge, faint hairlines. Issued in the years around the Panic of 1837, Hard Times tokens often feature texts and images satirizing the Democratic administrations of Andrew Jackson and Marin van Buren. Jackson's veto of the re-charter of the Second Bank of the United States led to the dissolution of what was effectively the nation's central bank (1836), and his subsequent Specie Circular, an executive order that required payment for land purchase in gold and silver, triggered rampant hoarding and a severe credit shortage, resulting in a major depression that lasted well into the next decade. The opposing Whig party derided these measures as ill-advised experiments of the executive and issued these tokens as a forerunner to the modern campaign button.
Estimate: 80-100 USD