Guinea trade tokens
The tokens were made by manufacturers...
- Ref. No: SA/MARK/ADV/1/3/1
- Date: 1882-1913
- Level: SubSubSeries
- Extent: 1 box, 61 items
- Access: Open
Newspaper cutting from the Hornsey and Finsbury Park Journal referring to the 100,000 guinea trade tokens that changed hands in one week after the...
Copper alloy tokens with gold coating. 20 tokens have head profile and inscription ' J. SAINSBURY FOR BEST PROVISIONS' on one side and heraldic...
Copper alloy tokens. All feature heraldic shield and inscription 'M.B.F.ET.H.REX.F.D.D.ET.L.D.S.R.I.A.T.ET.E.1798' on one side and profile head and...
Correspondence regarding Imitation 'Spade' Guineas between Mr R.N.P. Hawkins, Esq., and Mr Salisbury of Sainsbury's. Consists of 6 letters: (1)...
Press cutting from Newbury Weekly News featuring an article on spade guineas entitled "Celebratory token".
Letter from Mr R.N.P. Hawkins to The Company Secretary dated 6 Mar 1985 enclosing a complimentary offprint of Supplement III to his "Catalogue of the...
Copper alloy tokens with a gold-coloured surface and a variety of head profiles and inscriptions. For example, some tokens have the inscription...
Newspaper cutting describing the confusion experienced by a member of the public when he found a brass replica of a George III coin dated 1798 bearing...
The tokens were made by manufacturers in Birmingham, and were bought in vast quantities by many retailers to be stamped with their own devices, and to be given away to customers. Although these tokens had no monetary value and could not be exchanged for goods, customers collected them in large numbers for use as toy money or gaming tokens, and they proved to be a highly successful advertising gimmick.
The Sainsbury tokens vary considerably in design. The earliest known was issued in 1882, and bore the head of George III on one side with the legend "Wholesale Depot - London NW" and "J. Sainsbury, Provision Merchant opposite West Croydon Station" on the other. Several varieties of tokens were issued with the opening of the Seven Sisters Road North branch of Sainsbury's in 1889 - examples include "special table delicacies", "dealer of poultry and game", "arrivals of pure butter daily", and "high class provision merchant".
The Company's last purchase of "guineas" occurred in 1913 to celebrate the opening of a branch in Norwich. A very popular design of token much used at the beginning of this century just bore a rather double chinned profile of George III and the legend "J. Sainsbury for best provisions". Apparently the Company disposed of a large number of its tokens in c.1915 to a travelling theatre group to use as stage props.
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Comprises photographs, slides, tranparencies and negatives of general advertising material including: general advertisements featuring the slogans "SAINSBURY'S - The House that is built on QUALITY" [1915]; "Be fashionable! Shop at J. Sainsbury's" [1930s design of W. H. Balcombe]; "It's clean, it's fresh at SAINSBURY'S" [1948]; "Grin and share it!"; "Doing the job...the link with the customer"; "J. Sainsbury's High Grade Groceries" [1928]; "Sainsbury's making life taste better"; "How to shop Self-service": "Good Food is best bought...at Sainsbury's"; "All the best from Sainsbury's"; "The Proof of the Pudding"; "Good food costs less"; "Fresh proof that good food costs less at Sainsbury's"; "Sainsbury's. Everyone's favourite ingredient" (including "J. Sainsbury, grocer. Part of the local community"); "Sainsbury's still a family business"; "Sainsbury's and that 'Lost Love' Business" [1915]; "All under one roof at Sainsbury's" [1948]; "Sainsbury's. Essential for the essentials"; "On everyday essentials, Sainsbury's keep the same low prices week after week, after week, after week, after week, after week"; 70th, 80th and 125th anniversary advertisements; various examples of Abbott Mead Vickers/SMS Ltd.'s advertising campaign for Sainsbury's; poultry advertising; Sunday shopping campaign; first TV commercial; frozen foods; poster stamp/cardboard animals advertising campaign; 'Little Red Riding Hood' tea cards; Selsa goods; extract from advertisement showing a Sainsbury store at 173 Drury Lane [c.1869]; Spade Guinea advertising tokens; historical timeline; promotional butter dish (see SA/MAR/ADV/1/1/7/6); promotional cheese dish; free trade/competition; advertising flags and balloons; Songs of Sainsbury: 'The Careful Choice of Food' and 'Food for Thought' by Pin [1928]; free gifts: tea set [pre-1914] (see SA/MAR/ADV/1/1/7/3) and crayons; self-service; 1890s advertisement from Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book: "J. Sainsbury, London's largest distributor of High-class Provisions..." (see SA/MAR/ADV/1/6/2); fairy story tea cards; British and Foreign Bird tea cards; food supplies at Sainsbury's; low price offers, reductions and discounts; The Official England Squad Medal Collection 1998 (see SA/MAR/ADV/1/1/7/10) 'J. Sainsbury's High Grade Groceries, 3 Dec 1928' transparency copy of price list cover (See SA/MARK/ADV/3/3/3/6) 'Good food for Christmas' copy of inside of price list 1935 (see SA/MARK/ADV/3/3/6/1/14) 'Sainsbury's. Where good nappies cost less...and less...and less...and less' Buy one get one free colour transparency advertisement [c.1980s] 'At Sainsbury's prices , it must be Christmas. Good food costs less at Sainsbury's' advertisements strip of transparencies featuring Christmas turkeys [c.1980s] 'At Sainsbury's we carve our prices to the bone' advertisement transparency featuring turkey and wine [c.1980s] 'Sainsbury's. Everyone's favourite ingredient' wine and roast advertisement transparency (1990s)
Photographs, slides, transparencies and negatives of general advertising
SA / MARK / ADV / IMA / 1 / 1
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