A blank disc was worth whatever the two of you agreed
Canteen tokens carried no printed value of their own, which is exactly what let a stack of them get spent on something the people who issued them never priced.
A stack of tokens, mid grey, uneven and slightly fanned. Eight sit piled together; a ninth is set apart, tipped up on its edge. Every face is blank — no numbers, no letters, nothing moulded in beyond the seam line where the mould split.
Nothing printed on any of them says what one is worth. That was never on the object to begin with.
Why print a stack of blank tokens as a shirt at all?
Because a canteen issued them to replace cash at the till, and somewhere outside the till they started buying something the canteen never sold.
A token like this exists to move a fixed sum of money one step away from the hand that earned it — that's the whole job it was designed for. What's worth drawing is the next step nobody designed: the same disc changing hands again, this time for a turn on somebody's machine, at whatever rate the two people trading it settled on between themselves.
Why does every token stay blank instead of carrying a printed value?
Because a printed value would tie the disc to the canteen's own price list, and its second life depended on it being tied to nothing.
A token with a number moulded into it is only ever worth that number, wherever it goes. A blank one carries no claim about what it buys, which is what let it be spent on a turn rather than a lunch — the value moved with the trade, not with the object. Nothing on the disc had to be crossed out or reinterpreted, because nothing was written there to begin with. It's a different kind of object from a taped name that marks exactly whose loan a case is — that claim is written on for one person to read. A blank token carries no claim for anyone to read at all.
Why does one token sit apart from the rest, up on its edge?
Because the stack is savings and the upright one is a transaction already in motion.
Eight tokens piled flat read as something being kept — held back, not yet spent. One standing apart on its edge is a different moment: picked out, about to change hands. The shirt isn't a still life of a coin jar. It's the instant just before one of these gets handed across.
Who owns a blank plastic disc?
Nobody — a round token with a single moulded seam and no other marking is a generic manufactured shape, not a design anyone holds rights to.
A specific canteen's actual token — its own colour, its own embossed initials or year — belongs to whoever issued it, the same way any branded object does, and reproducing that one for real is a licensing question rather than a free one. What's drawn here carries none of that: no colour tied to one institution, no embossed mark, nothing beyond the shape a blank token takes anywhere it's made.
Does this only work for a canteen token?
No — anything issued as a stand-in for one purpose and spent for another works the same way.
A laundry token, a raffle ticket bought for one draw and used to settle a bet instead, an arcade token traded for a favour rather than a game: each is worth exactly what its issuer priced it at until two people decide it's worth something else. It's a different kind of informal system from a coin balanced on its edge to hold a place in a queue — that coin never changes hands at all. This one exists for exactly that.
Isn't a blank disc just a poker chip?
No — a chip's value is printed or colour-coded into the object by the house that issues it, and stays fixed wherever the chip travels. A token like this one was never given a value to begin with.
That's the difference worth keeping straight: a chip is still tied to a formal system even away from the table it came from. A blank token has no system attached to it once it leaves the till — its worth was always going to be settled locally, between whoever was holding it and whoever wanted it, which is a much smaller and much less official kind of arrangement.
Does it print well?
Yes — a stack of flat round shapes in one grey ink is close to the simplest print a chest can carry, and the single moulded seam line survives at small scale without needing a second colour to read.
Keep the shading light — a hint of the moulded plastic's sheen on each disc, nothing close to a photographic gradient, which is what a token actually looks like from across a table anyway. Sand or any warm mid-tone garment lets the grey sit forward without needing black.
How do I get one made?
Describe the tokens at JustOG — how many, how loose the stack, which one's about to be handed over. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.
Designs other people have published are in the shop.
The canteen never knew what one of its tokens had bought by the time it came back.