Prisoner of war tokens

Hello,

I have seen several posts and coin sheets on coins that were issued for use in POW camps, or camps of displaced persons, and I though it would be interesting to share about the coins we have and about the sources of information about them.

I found a few entries on the forum
https://fr.numista.com/forum/topic52803.html
https://fr.numista.com/forum/topic60233.html

Here the link to the French thread https://fr.numista.com/forum/topic69678.html

In our catalogue, we find them searching POW.

And for a start, here are mine, all Austrian of the WWI, under the Donau Monarchy:

Here are some links to internet resources on those camps:

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/history_pubs/1/

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/prisoners_of_war_austria-hungary

In german about the camp of Grödig near Salzburg where there were more people than in the town of Salzburg at that time http://salzburg.orf.at/news/stories/2636949/

I just added a new token to our catalogue, https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces141244.html for a WWI camp in Braunau a. Inn, at the current Austro-German border.

Some info can be found here https://www.dorfhaselbach.at/2015/das-kriegsgefangenen-lager-in-haselbach/
and here https://www.braunau.at/Geschichte/Verantwortung_Geschichte/Trentinerplatz with a bit of translator's help.

Цитата: "Ecapoe"​I just added a new token to our catalogue, https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces141244.html for a WWI camp in Braunau a. Inn, at the current Austro-German border.
​

​The name immediately jumped out to me, and it took me three seconds to remember why!

Some years ago I saw few POW tokens in bulk lots,and not knowing what they were,just passed on...quite a mistake :(
I added this one https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces139497.html to the catalogue recently,if someone is interested at it,hurry up until it's still available :)

Цитата: "i_getsov"​Some years ago I saw few POW tokens in bulk lots,and not knowing what they were,just passed on...quite a mistake :(
​I added this one https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces139497.html to the catalogue recently,if someone is interested at it,hurry up until it's still available :)

Hello,
​Interesting token. The reverse is same as obverse inverted ? or is it inscripted ?

Inscripted.

I have a new found interest in Australian coins, and recently to my absolute amazement I discovered that even Australia has some POW coinage from WWII. It's massively rare however and on E-bay the prices are startling.


These are examples of the 1940s Hay Internment Camp POW currency. I never even knew these things existed in Australia till a short while ago. I've even been to Hay and I never knew!! Prices on E-bay are well over $100.00 Australian and up to even a few thousand dollars for one in good order. I doubt I'll ever see one, but you never know.

Hello Kipsley,
Certainly very interesting pieces of history!
We have the set here on our catalogue.
Here in Europe is the same, few people know of the existence of those camps from WWI (of course I do not mention the WWII camps that were totally different).
I have a token from Grödig near Salzburg (Austria). At that time the camp was larger than the city itself, around 40 000 prisoners and displaced people bit people living there now don't know about it. I guess they are bit of our histories people are not very proud of ...