E.L. Fraunfelter’s Cafe Phillipsburg NJ Token, help with more info

E.L. Fraunfelter’s Cafe Phillipsburg NJ Token, help with more information on this token

 

Looks like a metal detecting find.

 

Yes

I found it metal detecting, wanted to find out more information about it.

 

Edgar L Fraunfelter was the proprietor of a hotel in Phillipsburg from at least 1910 forward.

 

the name Fraunfelter is a crippled Frauenfelder and would be of Swiss origin meaning "from the town of Frauenfeld".

 

Commerce/trade tokens are a very specialized area of numismatics (coin collecting) that seems to be gaining in popularity. You might want to see if there has been a Token reference guide published for New Jersey as there has been for other states. Steve Hayden is one of the big names in that field although I believe he specializes in Civil War Tokens. There are literally tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of privately minted tokens out there for various establishments. This is partially due to the fact during the Civil War there was a shortage of official minted coinage and thus commerce had to be performed in other ways including privately minted tokens and fractional currency.

You may want to post your question on CoinTalk, the sister forum of this site that specializes in coins.