Lost Battleships

Happy birthday to us . . . SOMEHOW, it is April 2023 and that means that Token Publishing Ltd is 40 years old! We officially became a limited company on April 5, 1983, and somehow, four decades later, we are still here! We’ve come a long, long way in those 40 years, from publishing just one title, COIN & MEDAL NEWS, we now have two regular magazines (stalwart readers will remember the first issue of MEDAL NEWS as a standalone was March 1989), a number of regular books and a host of other titles in our “back catalogue”. At the last count, we had published over 80 books! That’s not bad going for a company that started off with just two people working from above a plumber’s shop in Hampshire and using the toilet as a store room! I have described the Token Timeline later on in this issue but here I would like to pay tribute to all those who have helped bring us to where we are today. We have an excellent and loyal team at Token now, with most of the staff having been with us for many years. Apart from the three Directors, all of whom have been here for what seems like forever (!), Lisa has been with us for 20 years, both Alyson and Klara have now been here over 15, and Jayne, Karen and Sera all joined in 2015. Deputy Editor Louise is the only “new face” and she replaced Janet, who had actually worked with us twice, once from 1992–1995 and then again for a far longer period stretching from 2002–2022. However, they are not the only ones who have helped shape our path these past four decades and I must, here, thank them all. This list is not exhaustive by any means, there are many, many people in the hobby who have supported us and helped us over the years and to list them all would be impossible, but those who worked for us, those who were part of the Token Team, deserve a mention so in addition to the wonderful staff we have now I would like to publicly thank: Abbey, Aimee, Alan, Amy, Celia, Charlie, Fiona, Jackie, Janis, Jacqui, Janet, Jen, Mel, Pip, Ruth, Sally, Sarah, Sarah-Lou, Simon and Tony. I would also like to thank all those who’ve worked closely with us over the years, either as Editors or consultants—sadly some, like Diana Birch and James Mackay, are no longer with us but others like John Sly and John Andrew are still very much part of their respective hobbies. We’ve also had regular columnists and authors over the years who have helped shape the magazines to be the award-winning publications they are today; there are so many fabulous writers who have contributed that to single any out would be wrong, but please be assured we thank you all and are very, very grateful! I can’t, of course, forget the advertisers, the dealers and auction houses who have supported us, who have stuck with us and who, I hope, see their loyalty rewarded with people responding to their adverts! And then there’s you, the readers! We’ve been privileged to meet so many of you over the years at coin and medal fairs here and across the globe, from San Jose to Singapore, from Dublin to Berlin, we’ve travelled far and wide over the years and have met some wonderful people; we’ve met with medal dealers, collectors, historians whose knowledge of medals is second to none and beginners just starting out, and many of these have become our friends. Yes, Token has been around for 40 years now, and yes at its heart it’s the dedication of the Team that makes it a success, but it’s also so much more. We know that without the support of writers and advertisers, without the loyalty of the readers, we wouldn’t have made past four years let alone four decades, so I thank you all. Here’s to the next 40!