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So what do you do with 3.4 million tokens?
By adamg on Wed, 06/27/2012 - 1:30pm
Tokens all bagged and ready to go. Photo by MBTA.
Saturday is the last day you can use an old T token to buy or add value to a CharlieCard or ticket. The MBTA reports it's now sitting on a cache of 3.4 million tokens - stored in its money room - about 5 1/2 years after it sold the last one. Spokesman Joe Pesaturo says that with the official end of the token era, the authority will likely solicit bids from companies interested in buying them all as scrap. Pesaturo adds:
This year (through last week), 12,479 tokens were redeemed in fare vending machines. This is a tiny fraction of the 9,574,332 transactions at FVMs during the same time period this year. The value of the tokens also represents a very small fraction of all revenue collected at the FVMs during that time frame. Value of tokens equal $15,598.75. Total Revenue Collected equals $72,049,918.35.
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Comments
Could a local news site that has them for a logo use them?
Seems like this could be a unique marketing opportunity for any local web sites that just happen to use the token as part of their logo. But what kind of marketing stunt would do?
Bikes, cars, and slingshots
UH could sponsor a paintball-like battle royale--bicyclists versus motorists, in equal numbers. Each group armed with slingshots, protective gear, and 100 tokens each. Shutdown the Mass Ave. bridge, and let them go at it...
Here's a sure winner
Drop sacks of tokens from a helicopter. Especially if we could entice Les Nessman out of retirement.
As god as my witness...
I thought sacks of T Tokens could fly...
On the other hand ...
Maybe they would hit some flocks of turkeys ...
For that matter, how about
Walter Dyer, the man who once claimed he set up a publicity stunt to drop $100 bills from a light plane into Central Square Lynn.
I say "claimed" because none of the money allegedly dropped was ever found.
And in a related story, the T notes that
approximately 900 million CharlieTickets have been discarded in the trash since the elimination of the reuseable tokens.
To tokens recycled
They are very popular for crafters and jewelry
http://www.etsy.com/listing/67312880/boston-t-mta-...
They even make it into the trash?
I usually find them blowing around on the ground/station floor/train floor.
Finding a token used to make my day. Now, I just find litter.
CharlieTickets with remaining value should become much rarer
It used to be, and maybe still is, common to find discarded $5 CharlieTickets with $1 left over (after two $2 subway trips). Now that the cost of a CharlieTicketed subway ride is rising to $2.50, this won't happen much anymore.
I could not add tokens to my CharlieCard last night
at any of the Davis Square Charlie machines -- even though they are supposed to accept the tokens through this Saturday.
WardMaps.com could probably buy some of them
to make into cufflinks, earrings, and other souvenirs.
(by the way, Adam, did you intend to link to some news story here?)
No, this is some token original reporting
Just something I slotted onto the site.
hmmmm...
Coining a joke are we? Well, go on and test your mettle. As we say in Eastie, "dime un otro."
anybody adding to this pun thread
should be slugged.
hey,
...it's not like once we get started we can just turn on a dime.
Token hires remain after June 30
No technology seems able to displace token and political hiring in Massachusetts...
Giveaways
Since they won't be worth anything, I wouldn't mind having a couple, just for the heck of it. I used to have some, but I cashed them in a while back.
Remember the previous non-token era of the 70s?
Keep in mind, the entire MBTA cache of tokens sat untouched in a vault somewhhere for years once before. Sometime in the early 70s the token system was done away with and the turnstyles accepted coins only. Remember that era? Tokens were brought back at some point in the 80s I believe, and went back into circulation.
Indeed I do
I think they brought the tokens back when the fares jumped from 25 cents (yes, kids, a quarter used to be enough to get you onto the T - unless you planned to get off in some faraway place like Quincy, in which case you had to pack another quarter).
Sell them
at a buck a piece that's 3.4 million dollars dropped into the T coffers. It won't close any sort of budget hole, but it's not a drop in the bucket either.
I'd buy a roll if only as a souvenir.
Not such a bad idea
I was actually thinking the same — I wouldn't mind having a few for nostalgia value. I haven't seen one in years…
Jewelry
You could make many times that if some were fashioned into "limited edition" jewelry - necklaces, bracelets, earrings, cufflinks, tie clips...
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Who wouldn't want a shiny T token as a souvenir?
I was talking about this idea with my co-workers and we all agreed that paying $5 for a roll of polished tokens would be a nice keepsake. Why doesn't the T just sell these tokens in their souvenir shops? It'll be worth more than having them processed as generic scrap metal.
The T (or someone licensed by
The T (or someone licensed by them, I don't recall the details) used to sell cufflinks and all sorts of other token-upcycling junk. Kind of like the seats from the old Garden.
I was dumping a bunch of change into one of those Coinstar machines this winter and a few tokens fell out as rejects from the counting machine.
Someday I'll tell someone's grandkids how back in the day we had not only metal money, but metal pseudo money that we stuck in boxes to get onto diesel buses. And I'll show them a grimy old token and smile at the absurdity of it all.
Why wouldn't they be required to honor them...
for seven years essentially like gift cards?
If only...
they don't even honor Charlie tickets for that long.
I'm not a lawyer or anything
I'm not a lawyer or anything so there might be other legal issues involved, but the gift certificate expiration law explicitly uses the phrase "gift certificate" which officially is defined to be something "purchased by a buyer for use by a person other than the buyer." Since MBTA tokens and Charlie Cards are both in theory and in practice used primarily by the same people who buy them, it wouldn't seem to qualify.
vintage T
When the Southwest Corridor opened in 1987 there were commemorative tokens around for a while that were silver-colored instead of the usual (brass-colored?). I saved one of them and still have it.
Tall Ships Come to Boston, 1992!
My mother still has some of the Tall Ships Commemorative tokens from from they came to Boston in 1992!
Other Value?
Vecturism, anyone?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
http://www.mbta.com/fares_and
http://www.mbta.com/fares_and_passes/charlie/?id=2...
Effective July 20, 2012, the MBTA will no longer redeem tokens. Due to increased demand to redeem tokens before July 20, 2012, we will continue to accept tokens via fare vending machines at the following locations:
Downtown Crossing, Harvard Square, Riverside, Ruggles, Quincy Center, and Government Center Stations.
Customers will be able to redeem tokens for CharlieCard/Ticket value via Fare Vending Machines at these locations.
The MBTA will also redeem tokens for CharlieCard/Ticket value during normal business hours at the Downtown Crossing Pass Office and 10 Park Plaza, Suite 4730.
That link also says, "One Way
That link also says, "One Way Single Rides for Zone 9 and Zone 10 will be charged at the One Way Fare at all times".
What the heck does that mean?
Are they trying to say that the $3 on-board surcharge won't apply for these tickets? That would make some sense, since they never bothered to update the Charlie ticket machines to sell these zones.
If that is the case, if you're going to Providence and don't have a ticket, you can pay just 50 cents extra instead of the $3 surcharge by buying a ticket to TF Green, if the train goes there.
I want
A bag full of tokens. I have a single token in a little frame, which I carried with me for years before I came back home.