I think I know the answer to my questions, and I'm slightly embarrassed to even ask this question here, but I want to make sure. While rummaging through some piles of detritus, I came across some old video game tokens from Chuck E. Cheese, Showbiz, Country Kitchen and a local amusement park. I'm wondering if I should even try to sell them or if I should just pitch them because they really don't have any value for me. They once had value, but that's apparently faded. I looked them up on Ebay, but the results were a little ambiguous. Basically, some asking prices were really high and some were really low.
Some Chuck E. Cheese tokens have the name of the arcade location on them and these are worth something. Chuck E. Cheese Pinole California 1981 Token Brass, 25mm, 5.32gm Obverse: Rat's head - PIZZA TIME THEATRE / CHUCK E. CHEESE / PINOLE, CA. Reverse: IN PIZZA WE TRUST / 25c PLAY VALUE / 1981
I ended up having to literally give away over 100 pounds of these including about 500 different. I was really close to setting them out in the garbage. Now I'm getting close to tossing a bunch of great transportation tokens. The irony is I'd love to get more of either of these to add to my collections. But I'm trying to get rid of duplicates and my old trading stock.
I wish they were worth something, I give them to my neighbor for summer camp, to give to the less fortunate kids
I love the Chuck E. Cheese token attribution. I do have a 1982 Chuck E. Cheese token with the location on it, similar to the Pinole, CA example posted. I also have a 1983 example with no location. It sounds like the one with the location may have some, probably a little, value, but the one without the location probably has little to none, as the example of having to give away 100 pounds of them heavily implies. I'm guessing the 1982 doesn't qualify as a great rarity (I'd like to see the look on the faces of the third party graders when they pull it out), but it's apparently more than worthless at least. Hm. So I may hang on to that one. Why not? For the others, well, I'm guessing that a Showbiz token, 2 Country Kitchen tokens, a "Free Prize" Ground Round token, 3 "Grand Slam Sports" tokens and a "Baja Buggies" token from Valleyfair don't exactly qualify as anything to even really get concerned about. I suppose one never knows. This is what happens when I actually try to clean out drawers that I rarely go into. If I would just stop cleaning, I wouldn't have these problems. Yes, I think I may follow that advice. So when is the Bowers book on Chuck E. Cheese tokens coming out?
I had some from around 1986 that I gave to a kid to use at Charles E Fromage. Found out later they were worth $3 and the older ones are worth more.
