Sew it buttons
I don't know how much water this holds, but there's a phrase on a Civil War token that says: "Money makes the mare go, sew it buttons." But a guy I know who deals in coins and tokens say a lot of 1700s and 1800s coins were punched because people had a string with a button in their pocket to hold coins and change.
I thought they were punched to be a keepsake or attached to a necklace.
Just curious on thoughts or if people have heard of this string and button thing for change.
Posted Sep 20, 2017, 8:14 PM UTC
71
For the curious, here are some examples of these tokens:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Money+makes+the+mare+go%22+buttons
I've never heard of using a string and button as a coin purse in the West, but it was apparently common to string coins together in China long ago. Their bronze "cash" coins with a square hole in the middle were of pretty low value individually so if you didn't have any silver (or wanted to keep it for yourself) you had to lug around a lot of the bronze stuff.
Maybe someone else here will know about keeping spending money on a string in the West.