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United States
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For the purposes of this thread post any coin, token or medal depicting a beard/beards. I'll get us started with a recent acquisition of mine, an original issued counterstamped 1705 Russian Beard Tax Token certified by PCGS. I had been looking for an original issued example of one of these for quite a while but they only seem to come to market very seldomly and most examples are in museums but I was finally able to acquire one earlier this month. As seen below.  Below is from the PCGS article about the history of Beard Tokens and below that is the link to the article. "In the late 17th century Russia was falling behind in modernization. When Peter I came into power in 1694 he had many ideas to reform Russia. Over the next few years he came up with a plan to improve Russia. Although Peter was in power, his co ruler Ivan V was against many changes that Peter had planned on making. When Ivan V died in 1696 Peter now could choose the path that he wanted to take towards seeing Russia's success. Peter had many ties to western Europe. He was impressed by their methods and adopted them for Russia. These rules would eventually lead to creating a modernized military as well as bringing French and Westerners into his court. Bringing in Westerners was a massive step in the right direction for Russia. Since Peter was trying to replicate Western ideals, having westerners in his court helped clean up the broken system that Russia had in place. Since these rules were based off Western standards there were many changes that the people of Russia were not used to. One of these many rules that came into effect in 1705 was for males in Russian society to shave their beards, or pay a beard tax. With the new law in effect, all men were required to shave or pay the tax, including: Nobles, military, Court officials, and high-ranking merchants. They had to pay anywhere from 60 to 100 Rubles per year (based on rank) to obtain a beard token. At the time this was not a cheap tax. Peasants were also required to pay one Kopek each time they came into the city to keep their facial hair. Law enforcement surrounded the city to catch everyone who entered with a beard. These tokens were often worn around the necks of bearded men to let law enforcement know that they paid their beard tax. The money that was raised from the beard tax overtime wouldn't have been much, but the point of this law wasn't to make revenue for the country. It was to clean up the look of Russia as a whole." https://www.PCGS.com/news/beard-tokensPlease let me know what you think and post your coins depicting beards! Edited by casualcoincollector 02/01/2019 04:42 am
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Pillar of the Community
United States
987 Posts |
I had never heard of this before. Very interesting!
Are the raw examples of this token online possible reproductions or fakes? They seem to be available but I know very little about them.
Edited by thisistheshow 01/31/2019 9:46 pm
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
574 Posts |
@thisistheshow,
Thanks!
Yeah, raw fakes coming out of China of Beard Tokens are very numerous and I actually have a handful of relatively high quality fakes that I bought for dirt cheap last year but you can tell pretty easily that they were produced recently.
Edited by casualcoincollector 02/01/2019 04:43 am
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Valued Member
Russian Federation
417 Posts |
That token is extremely rare. ~1000$ can be affordable compairing to some coins in that price, but I never knew someone of my collector mates (even penfriends) have it.
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2007 Jamestown 
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Germany, Wuerttemberg 1903F 5 Marks  
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Netherlands 1871 2 1/2 Gulden  
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5995 Posts |
Abe had one 
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My 1910 Sovereign OK that's all for now   
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Super idea for a thread! Napoleon III had a beard:  
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Ooooh. This one could run a while! And that beard token is really unusual. St Peter must have had a beard too. Brabant, gros St. Pierre, Louvain mint 1312-55:  
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Nice examples! 
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