Teledyne Wah Chang

22mm, hexagonal, zirconium (beautiful color does not come through well on scan)

About this token:

• If anyone has any similar tokens, please drop me a note! I would like to make a list of known types and varities.
• Feb 2024, eBay seller has a whole rainbow of these for $5 each! Includes the information: New old stock, circa 1984 - *RARE* Teledyne Wah Chang Albany Oregon ZIRCONIUM Alloy coin sized sample for manufactures. They are the size of a Quarter. The different colors are results of heating the metal to different temperatures.
• Coin World pubished a short article on these in 2015, article mentions that photos were run in Coin World Dec 18, 1968.
• Aug 2013, lot of 24 round unanoidzed varities (2 diff sizes) showed up on eBay, sold for $50 + $4.50 shipping (one bid)
• Feb 2013, several of these showed up on eBay this month, most same type as above but different colors: gold, green, blue. Sale prices varied, but were in the $5-$10 each range.
• Sept 2012, Wanda writes: I have a token that looks just like the pictures on the web page. I aquired mine by way of a tip when I was a waitress in the mid 90's. Mine is gold color and the inscription reads on the side of the symbol, TELEDYNE on top and beneath the symbol WAH CHANG ALBANY. The backside reads, ZIRCONIUM A CORROSION RESISTANT METAL.
• Sept 2011 - lot of six round (25mm) unanodized Zirconium tokens showed up on eBay. Seller gave the following information: My father-in-law used to work with Teledyne in Albany and got these prior to his retirement in 1976.
• I recently got two round tokens with designs similar to the one shown. One is 22mm and the other is 25mm (both un-anodized) so tokens seem to have been made in different sizes as well as different shapes.
• Information from Sheryl at Teledyne: The original round coins were produced starting sometime between approximately 1970-1972. There was no anodizing done to these coins, so they remained the original gray metal color.

  Wah Chang started producing the hexagonal coins in approximately 1974-1975. These were anodized in different colors. (The round coins were just the right size for putting into vending machines.)

  In approximately 1982-1984, a hexagonal coin made of vanadium was produced. You are cannot anodize vanadium, so these coins also remained the original gray metal color.

  Estimated mintages are "tens of thousands".
• Chris writes: I had some dealings with TWC (Teledyne-Wah-Chang, Albany) about 9 or ten years ago, so I'm sure some of the details may be a little off. If there's someone who used to work for them who reads this, they are welcome to make corrections.

  Back in 1995, I had requested a catalog and metal samples for an engineer friend of mine who worked for Genentech here in San Francisco, and the girl on the phone told me that they (TWC) had these tokens made to give to people, and they were a big hit. People just kind of liked the idea of having a cool little piece of exotic metal as a souvienir, I guess.

  Basically, any individual or prospective customer who showed an interest in TWC was sent a catalog and two or three of the little medallions that you have pictured. The idea was that they were to go on a key ring. I have a purple one that is zirconium, and another that was a neutral dull metallic color, of a different metal. I can't remember what it is, but within a month or two of receiving it, it turned a rather gnarly green color, due to the high humidity here in the bay area.

  Apparently, the "coins" have been (or had been) made several times, with changes to the face designs and shapes once or twice; they were made form whatever unusual "nuclear age" metals they were producing at the time. The only reason I know this is that the lady on the phone told me several times "don't test the 'coins' (medallions), we're sending 'tester chips' to you for that purpose." I didn't quite understand what 'tester chips' meant, but my friend did. The 'tester chips' were actually small 1"x2" pieces of Titanium, Zirconium and, I believe, maybe Niobium, but I'm not sure. they were designed to be dipped in corrosives to test there anti-corrosive qualities. I still have the pieces my engineer friend didn't need, along with a couple of the medallions.

  I don't know of any collector value these tokens may have, but they are pretty interesting.

• Teledyne has also made some commemorative "coins" (really medals) See: http://www.alleghenytechnologies.com/WahChang/pages/outlook/html/bkissues/2001/q3/q3_2001.htm (scroll down a bit)
• Ralph writes: Hi, I have two of these, one anodized green and one red. I got them between 1981 and 1987, probably more like somewhere in the middle. They were samples given out when a lab college contacted Teledyne for the manufacture of a zirconium lined lab scale reactor vessel. He was reversing the making of oil acid sludge by taking the sludge and heating it under pressure. The only material he could find that could handle such a corrosive environment was zirconium. The two tokens came in the company literature.
• A similar round token sold for $14 July, 2003 on eBay. Obverse: Wah Chang, Albany, (logo), A Teledyne Company; Reverse: A Nuclear Age Metal, (logo), Zirconium; Round, white metal (probably zirconium!)
• Jim writes: I'm a former employee of Wah Chang. Before Teledyne, the company logo was the chinese characters for "Wah Chang" (loosely translates "great development") The Logo on the token in your site was for all TELEDYNE companies, before Allegheny. Teledyne was a conglomerate which owned over a hundred companies. I don't know the specific dates for the token shown, but there were many different designs over time. This one must date after 1974 as it is higher quality than those available when I left that year.
• Web search turned up the Teledyne web page! According to the company history, Wah Chang Corp was founded in New York in 1916, and moved to Albany in 1956 to operate a zirconium plant for the US Bureau of Mines. The Albany plant was purchased by Teledyne in 1967, and in 1996 Teledyne merged with Allegheny Ludlam to form Allegheny Teledyne Inc.

Know anything about this token? Please send me a note: pineconeforge(at)gmail.com

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