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MINOX TOOL COIN

D. Scott Young

	Tool coins are actually small, circular brass tokens slightly smaller than an American 25 cent piece, with a hole drilled through the center.

There's a aura surrounding the mysterious "tool coins" that show up from time to time on eBay and other auctions. The stories about what they are, what their purpose was or is, etc., are many and varied, but Thorsten Kortemeier of Minox, GmbH kindly took the time to answer my questions about them.

The tool coins are actually small, circular brass tokens slightly smaller than an American 25 cent piece, with a hole drilled through the center. The classic Minox "maus" logo and a number are prominently struck into the metal, as is a circular border around the edge.

The coins were first struck and issued by Minox in the mid-50's when they were at the height of their production success. Over 200 hundred workers in the assembly department were issued these coins as a means of controlling the issue and return of highly valuable, custom designed and fabricated tools used in producing the Minox cameras. Each worker was issued a set of 10 of these coins with their own unique number stamped into them.

When work required a particular tool, the worker went to the tool room and surrendered a coin in order to receive the tool. On returning it to the tool room, the worker received his or her tool coin back again. Supervisors periodically did "coin checks" of the workers to aid in proper accountability of both the coins and, more importantly, the valuable tools themselves. This system of tool and coin accountability continued through the years until the mid-1990's, when it was discontinued.

Thousands of these tool coins have been produced over the years, as the number stamped into this particular sample indicates. A number of them have inevitably made their way into the private auction market as workers retired, left the company or otherwise ended up with the coins outside of Minox.