Lot 2333

Description

Netherlands, Wilhelm III, one gulden 1864; others 1956, 1957; two and a half guilders 1932, 1960, five cents 1907; collection of Netherlands boordgeld or Ship Money for the Passenger Ship N.V. STOOMV. MIJ, Amsterdam, tokens for five (2), ten, twenty five (2), one hundred (2), two hundred and fifty and five hundred cents. Very fine - extremely fine. (15)

Boordgeld (board-money/ship money) were metal and paper tokens issued by many Netherlands shipping lines from 1946 through the mid-1970s. Quite soon after the end of World War II, as trade, immigration, and general passenger travel became more conmonplace, a need became apparent for a universal method of payment to be used during jouneys on various Netherlards shipping lines. This was initially encouraged by the government of the Netherlands because of severe restrictions in the availability of foreign exchange. A second and far more important reason for using tokens was the fact that many crew members the various ships flying under the Netherlands flag were Javanese from Indonesia. Since passengers were likely to have the greatest in variety of coins, banknotes and traveler's cheques from many different countries, it was decided to issue tokens to avoid confusion on board ship. Consequently, after boarding and/or during the journey, passengers could exchange their moneys for ship tokens, thus enabling them to pay for any goods or services which they required. During the journey, only ship tokens were accepted as payment. Paper tokens were initially issued but were withdrawn and replaced by metallic tokens.