Jim Delaney

Being raised in a military family and then serving 20+ years in the service myself I have had the opportunity to see a lot of the world. I have always had an interest in collecting one thing or another.

My interest in coins and later tokens began went my wife purchased a metal detector for me from Sears when I was stationed in Germany. My first find was a Roman coin and many more soon followed. For the longest time I collected ancient and foreign coins. Eventually my interest migrated to European Notgeld and tokens and I found that transportation tokens were enjoyable as well as plentiful and affordable.

I discovered the AVA in 1997 and quickly became a member. In October of 2009, after consulting with John Coffee and a select group of collectors, I accepted the challenge and became the Car Wash Token editor. At the time I didn’t even collect car wash tokens and really had no idea what I was getting myself into. A few car wash token collectors came to my aid and with their support and encouragement I prevailed.

My first supplement for the Fare Box was included in January of 2010 and they have been coming out almost monthly since.

The hobby took a major step in 2011 when the car wash catalog was added to the tokencatalog.com website. For the first time collectors could see visual references to the tokens. This sparked more interest in the hobby and collectors from around the world began adding to the catalog.

A hard copy of the catalog was made available in 2014 and because of the onslaught of new finds, another catalog is in the works.

In the 10 years I have been the editor the catalog has grown from just under 3000 listings to over 12,000 listings from over 40 different countries.