Among the more interesting and rarer items are error tokens. That said, car wash tokens from seldom encountered localities and known to be rare will attract collector interest. Newer tokens – those from the late 1970s and 1980s – do not necessarily carry the same demand, though as time marches on, this may soon change. Age does not seem to be as much a factor in cost or availability since there are thousands of the early Sofspra tokens still around, and even some more recent pieces can fetch noteworthy sums. Now that the earliest such tokens are around fifty years old, expect more interest in them. There are a number of rarer pieces, including some of which exceed $100 a token, a high amount for any trade token. Most seldom exceed a couple of dollars apiece, and some can be found in quantity, often by the pound. Several other types are known, including several brass, aluminum, plastic, and bimetallic pieces, as well as some plain “ owl-head” or “bear-head” shaped tokens designed for use in specific types of machines.īy the mid to late 1980s, token-based car wash booths began to be phased out in favor of more sophisticated facilities, leading to the modern-day, completely automated operations of today that use credit/debit cards or similar technologies.Ĭar wash tokens are, for the most part, very inexpensive. Sofspra was not the only company to use tokens. While useful, mintages do not necessarily indicate actual rarity as with most tokens, tokens with an entire mintage of 1,000 saved tokens made available to collectors are much more common than an issue where 2,000 were struck then retired and destroyed, leaving maybe a couple left. Most were struck in modest quantities per individual franchise, usually around one to two thousand pieces, in the mid-1960s. The tokens were struck by Meyer & Wenthe in Chicago, one of the largest token manufacturers of the period, who fortunately kept many of their order records, thereby providing information on how many tokens were struck and when. One thing they do have in common is that all Sofspra tokens are a uniform 27 mm in diameter and are made of a cupronickel alloy on thick planchets. By far, the most prolific issuer of tokens, not all Sofspra franchises employed token dispensing machines. They would then go to a free car washing booth and insert the token to activate the hose and/or dispense soap. To get a token, a customer would go to a separate vending machine, often near the main office of the business and purchase tokens. To help counter the threat of coin theft, tokens were introduced in the 1960s, most notably by the Sofspra company based out of Chicago. Many of these booths were out in the open and not necessarily monitored constantly, making the coin machines vulnerable to vandalism. In the 1960s, this was alleviated by the development of the self-service car wash that allowed people to bring their cars to a space and rent time in a simple drive-through booth to wash your car using their hose and soap for a modest fee. These, too, could be a bit more money than many felt comfortable paying at the time. Automatic car washes did not prove economically viable until just before the coming of World War II with the advent of conveyor belt-driven tunnel washes. The cars were hand-washed, often as a service at gas stations, and although this service was generally not terribly cheap, a few enterprising businesses offered tokens for these early washes. Not until Henry Ford and his Model T did the car become a realistic goal for the non-affluent. For most of the early years of the automobile, most cars were the dominion of only the wealthy and well-to-do.
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