Forum Posters Discuss a Civil War Token Reading "SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOOT"
In a CoinTalk forum thread, posters discussed a Civil War token whose reverse reads "SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOOT"; a poster said it should be "SPOT." One poster put its value at about $250 and said about 3,000 are known; these figures are the poster's own statements and were not verified.
Correction (Oct 13, 2026): We corrected the headline, summary and body to match the source forum thread. We made clear that the value and number known are a poster's statements, and removed a claim that the federal government banned the tokens in 1964, which rested on an unclear passage in the source, along with unrelated keywords. We also removed wording that called the spelling an error as fact. The previous headline was "Civil War Token's \"SPOOT\" Error: $250 Value, 3,000 Known."
This article summarizes posts in a CoinTalk forum thread titled "Civil War Token Error." The source does not give the date of the posts. What follows are the posters' own statements and opinions, not verified facts.
The thread concerns a Civil War-era token. One poster wrote that the reverse reads "SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOOT" and that it should be "SPOT."
Another poster wrote that they have a SPOOT, and several posters said they have both the SPOT and SPOOT pieces. One poster said they had noticed that their SPOT has no date; the thread does not explain why.
Value and Number Known, According to a Poster
One poster wrote that the piece is worth about $250 in that condition and that only about 3,000 of the SPOOT pieces are known to exist. The same poster said it is probably not worth getting graded, but is a cool piece of history. The thread gives no basis for these figures.
History, According to a Poster
Another poster, saying they were not sure, wrote that these tokens were privately issued in 1863 and used just like real money. According to that post, federal coinage was scarce in places because of the Civil War, and private mints filled in.
One poster asked whether SPOOT was simply how the word was spelled at the time. No post explains the reason for the spelling.
Source: CoinTalk, "Civil War Token Error."
Read next
Weekly Market Intelligence
Weekly rare coin intelligence — auctions, price action, and analysis, delivered via LINE.
Free · Instant · Block anytime