PLASTIC cards and mobile phones provide for almost all our needs when it comes to making payments or proving identity but this was once the preserve of metal checks and tokens.

Workers picking up their wages at Vickers would hand over a numbered brass disc in return for their money and similar tokens acted as passes to be on docks or railway property.

Many shops and pubs offered incentives to regular customers in the shape of metal coins marked with a redemption value of a few pennies and some piece workers received metal tokens for coal mined or lime quarried.

Examples of many of these curious items appeared in a specialist auction held as part of the Token Congress held at the Hilton Hotel, Warwick.

A promotional token for the Keswick-based Goodfellows Genuine Tea Warehouse sold for £26 and a Kendal half-penny token from the end of the 18 th century – when private companies issued their own small change – sold for £25.

There was a top bid of £20 for a brass medallion struck to mark the opening of the Senhouse Dock in 1884 and a brass six-pence token from the shop of John Parkin at Appleby made £11.

A bid of £30 secured a brass token issued by owners Harris and Fawcett at the Brigham Lime Works in Cumberland.

It has a value of seven bushels and would represent a piecework payment to a worker on the 19 th century.

A unusual silver pass allowing a councillor to have free rides on buses run by the Sheffield Transport Department sold for £34 and £60 was paid for a copper token from a pub at Sawley in Yorkshire which featured an image of a fish.