Civil War Merchant Token – Mather and Shefferly Detroit, Michigan

Mather & Shefferly operated as a dry goods merchant in Detroit during the years when the federal government's suspension of specie payments and mass hoarding of small coinage had effectively collapsed the nation's small-change supply. Merchants across the North filled the void themselves, commissioning privately struck copper tokens that passed at one cent face value. By conservative estimates, over 25 million such tokens entered circulation between 1862 and 1864.

Congress effectively killed the trade in 1864 by prohibiting private coinage intended to circulate as currency — at which point many merchants simply stopped redeeming their own issues.