wooden nickel

plural wooden nickels

1. A wooden token that is manufactured and distributed by a particular business as an advertising gimmick or which can be exchanged for goods, many of which have now become collector's items.

   A wooden nickel can be round or rectangular, and if round, of any size from a nickel or smaller up to a dollar or larger .

   1978, Carl Allenbaugh, Robert M. Poeschl, Coins: Questions and Answers, page 159

   4 more examples

   Your Rivermont wooden nickel has tremendous purchasing power! Every customer on our mailing list has received a Rivermont wooden nickel.

   1960, The Orchid Digest - Volume 24, page 417

   In a coin catalogue, recently came across a wooden nickel issued it Cape Parry . On one side is an Indian's head and the words ' wooden nickel '. On the other side is ' Cape Parry Dewline'.

   1986, Sentinel - Volumes 22-24, page 21

   It took quite some time to collect enough wooden nickels to equal anything of value. And what many customers didn't realize was that everything in the "wooden nickel" stores was priced higher than anywhere else.

   1998, Jim Feldbush, Nancy Beck Irland, Carolyn Sutton, Eye-openers

   One of the souvenirs of the time was the traditional wooden nickel, actually made of thin balsa and redeemable for cash at the Blairstown Press office.

   2011, Kenneth Bertholf Jr., Don Dorflinger, Blairstown and Its Neighbors

   Synonyms: wooden nutmeg

2. USbankingThe smallest amount of money imaginable.

   I wouldn't be in your shoes for a wooden nickel.

   2003, Sandra Dallas, The Chili Queen

   4 more examples

   His patients, on the other hand, were precisely such people as recognized that without self-understanding, without direction, without health of the inner as of the outer man, life was not worth a wooden nickel.

   1961, Clara Winston, The Hours Together: A Novel, page 31

   Renounce all personal pleasures and personal profit. It is all just pennies—or, as my young friend Julia would say, it's a wooden nickel.

   1981, The Little Lamp - Volumes 21-23, page 57

   Captain sure knew he was taking on two inexperienced greenhorns to round out the ship's full complement of eighteen men, officers and able seamen, and it wasn't costing him so much as a wooden nickel.

   2014, John B. Severance, Fortune Found, page 105

   I think of Grandpa and Dad, who always asked us if we were having a silver dollar day or a wooden nickel one.

   2015, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Fish in a Tree, page 24

3. A worthless replica of a coin, usually intended to defraud.

   Wendell's goodhearted chuckle was as fake as a wooden nickel.

   2014, Marcia Evanick, Harbor Nights

   3 more examples

   Don't take any wooden nickels warned innocents going abroad to steer clear of con artists.

   2008, Rosemarie Ostler, Let's Talk Turkey, page 66

   In fact, Dave Ferrie had laughed about Robert's scheme to cheat the transit system, giving me a wooden nickel so I'd always “have some change” that Robert couldn't stash away.

   2011, Judyth Baker, Jim Marrs, Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald

   The rest of the report was nothing more than innuendo and slander, none of it provable and every word of it calculated to wreck any chance he had at conning a single tourist watching that broadcast out of so much as a wooden nickel.

   2015, Robert Asprin, Linda Evans, Tales of the Time Scouts

4. figurativelySomething that purports to be something other than it actually is, especially that purports to be more valuable than it actually is.

   He can't be trusted. Didn't you hear the awful Irish accent he put on when he was staring at you? He's a wooden nickel, for sure.

   2009, Betina Krahn, Sweet Talking Man: A Novel

   4 more examples

   Another wooden nickel would be a husband returning totally on his terms, where his terms are that you do not deal with the relationship.

   1993, Donald R. Harvey, When the One You Love Wants to Leave, page 149

   The Illusionist recasts the Brandon story in Sparta, New York, and makes the Brandon character into an amateur magician who picks up women in the Wooden Nickel bar; the novel insists, in other words, that since Dean Lily is only a counterfeit man, “a wooden nickel,” he must seduce his unknowing heterosexual partners by using a deadly combination of charm and magic.

   2005, J. Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, page 62

   The crooks who stuck him with a mysterious horse of another color and a phoney bill of sale never told him they'd slipped him a wooden nickel, or a horse he'd never be able to sell.

   2005, Tabor Evans, Longarm and the Horses of a Different Color

   No one's perfect even if you believe I am seeking perfection and love, when real, and not just a wooden nickel, is not always something one wears on one's sleeve like a cheap arm patch bought at the second hand store.

   2013, Sereena Nightshade, Black Market, page 231