Telephone Tokens of the USSR, Russia, the CIS and the Baltic States

Authors: A. Savosin, M. Iskov Language: Russian Moscow, 2009. 137 pages A catalogue of telephone tokens used in the USSR and post-Soviet countries. Tokens became widespread in the 1990s. This was driven by rapid inflation, a lack of suitable coins in the new national currencies of the former republics, and the fact that services could not keep up with converting payphone coin mechanisms. Soon, counterfeit handmade tokens appeared as well. The situation returned to normal only with the introduction of magnetic cards for paying for phone calls. The catalogue consists of 7 sections: 1. Tokens with Cyrillic text. 2. Tokens with text in Latin script, Georgian and Armenian. 3. Letterless tokens. 4. Surrogates. 5. Unmarked tokens. 6. Unidentified. 7. Appendices.