1860 Levick Smoker Token No Pleasure Can Exceed the Smoking of the Weed - 1860 Levick Smoker Token, M-NY-426, NGC UNC Details. Despite its grading, The Smoker merchant token is an interesting and desirable piece. It is Uncirculated and lustrous with original colors of silver, gray, tan, yellow, green, and gold showing on both sides. The obverse toning is lighter than the reverse. Aside from the scratches on both sides, the surfaces are clean with no other distractions. The token is well struck from slightly rotated dies, which is not mentioned on the NGC insert.

The obverse shows a well dressed, happy gentleman smoker half facing left holding a cigar and exhaling a cloud of smoke. At the border is the inscription NO PLEASURE CAN EXCEED / THE SMOKING OF THE WEED. (In 1860, weed meant tobacco with no other connotation.)  The reverse shows crossed pipes above a tobacco or cigar box with the text REGALIAS surmounted by a crown. Above the pipes is the inscription LEVICK 904 BROADWAY NEW YORK in two lines with the date below. The whole is surrounded by a closed wreath of tobacco leaves. There are dentils on both sides of the token. It was struck in silver (the present piece), brass, copper, and white metal. 

Joseph N.T. Levick commissioned George Lovett to design a large group of tokens not only for his tobacco business, but also for his personal collection.  Levick was a lifelong smoker who lived to the age of 80.  There are many mulings of this famous obverse and reverse with other dies to create rarities for the avid collector, but the above piece is the original advertising card and probably the first group made for Levick by Lovett.
Preeminent in the field of tokens, J.N.T. Levick assembled a marvelous collection of these pieces during the late 19th century, while at the same time compiling definitive lists of Hard Times tokens and other issues. He also studied the Large Cents of 1793 and contributed the photographic plate to Sylvester S. Crosby's American Journal of Numismatics article which appeared in April 1869. Collections and groups of coins bearing his name were sold by various dealers from 1859 to 1908. One sale held by Bangs, Merwin & Company in 1865 was particularly notable as was a later offering featuring his token collection. The Levick pedigree on a Large Cent or token is at once distinguished and elusive.

Levick lived in or near Philadelphia in the 1850s where he was an active coin collector and chief bookkeeper for Freeman & Simpson. He was a member of the Philadelphia Numismatic Society, the first numismatic club in the United States. In 1859 he visited New York City where he attended auction sales, one conducted by August B. Sage. He later moved to New York where he worked as a banker, a dealer in government securities, a broker, and a trader of gold and silver. In 1860 Levick began to issue tokens made by George H. Lovett. He participated in the formation of the New York Numismatic Society in 1864. Soon afterwards that organization merged with the American Numismatic Society to form the American Numismatic and Archeological Society, forerunner of the current American Numismatic Society. Levick made a proposal in 1866 that led to the establishment and publication of the American Journal of Numismatics. During the Civil War Levick served as a lieutenant in New Yorks Sickles Brigade as an observer in a reconnaissance balloon.

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