The last of the card money from the Sydney Hodgkinson collection from posts in the northern B.C. District of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Hudson’s Bay Company, B.C. District, Dease Post, $5 Scrip last of find $1500.+
Lot 95 in our 1200th Auction 9th March 2019
Card scripts (or card tokens) from the H.B.C. Tradings Posts in Northern B.C. were collected by Sydney Hodgkinson and brought in to All Nations by his family.
Sydney Hodgkinson worked as an accountant with the mighty Hudson’s Bay Company from 1908 to 1935. The trading posts were often in tiny, remote settlements.
Brian Grant-Duff is the expert who has handled the entire collection: card scrip is basically non-government issued, unofficial or semi-official currency. It looks like they come from the pre-World War I era. The historical record, which is scant, says that they were not supposed to be issued, they were not authorized by the Hudsons Bay Company. But the poor guys running the post needed some form of money as people were trading. So this is possibly locally created scrip.
The scrips are very small, like an old-fashioned ticket at a movie theatre. They come in four different denominations, each with a different colour. The 25-cent scrips were white, 50 cents were green, $1 was red and $5 was blue.
