Remembering Uncle Sam 3-Coin Register Banks

Almost every toy coin bank produced has had a “cheat” built into it. A false bottom, a rubber stopper, a sliding panel, all of which allowed you to scoop out the few coins you put in earlier that day so that you would have some change to go to the candy store. And even if the banks didn’t have a rubber stopper, all it took was one good whack with a hammer or a drop from the high shelf of a dresser, and instant access to your money was assured.

The Uncle Sam 3-Coin Register Bank was another story. Once you deposited more than 25 cents into its cash register-shaped slot and pulled the lever, that money was locked in and inaccessible. The only way to access your cash was to put more money in – quarters, nickels, dimes – until the register reached $10, at which point the bank’s front panel would open up, and you could obtain your funds, as though tapping an ATM machine.

This bank should not be confused with a mechanical bank that also used Uncle Sam as its motif. That Uncle Sam bank was originally manufactured in 1886 by the Shepard Hardware Company of Buffalo, N.Y., and features a standing cast-iron Uncle Sam, his hand outstretched to hold your money. Put a coin in his hand, pull a hidden lever, and Uncle Sam will drop your change into the bag at his feet. It’s a nice iconic collectible bank, but not the one that is part of this column.

An Uncle Sam 3-Coin Register Bank is actually shaped like a cash register, and the only reference to the patriotic icon is the name “Uncle Sam Bank” printed on the register’s front panel. The Uncle Sam 3-Coin Register Bank evolved from similar penny register and dime register banks manufactured in 1906 by the Durable Toy & Novelty Company, with offices in New York City and Cleveland. Their banks worked like this: the penny bank locked on the first cent and would open after $1 in pennies was deposited; whereas it would take $10 in dimes to unlock the dime bank. By 1923, the three-coin register bank, which would take dimes, nickels and quarters, became available and has survived, under several different manufacturing companies, to this day.

Guy Zani Jr., a New Port Richey, Fla., collector of toy banks and antique safes, is the foremost expert on the Uncle Sam 3-Coin Register Bank, having spent 15 years studying the evolution of the bank, researching the unit through different Durable Toy catalogs, and authoring a definitive collector’s guide on the bank and its derivative units.

“I had an Uncle Sam register bank as a kid,” said Zani, “and I’ve always been interested in safes. I have the largest private collection of antique safes in the southeastern United States, over 10 tons of safes in my house. I wrote a book on the Uncle Sam register banks as a service to the collector, and wrote it from the standpoint of what I would want to know as a collector, with lots of detail and description in the book.”

Zani’s book shows the evolution of the Uncle Sam register bank, which was sold in several different enameled colors – black, red, green and chrome among them. “The banks were colored with baked enamel,” said Zani, “paint over steel. Durable advertised it as ‘cold-rolled’ steel, but it was heavy gauge steel with an enamel paint job. If you take care of the bank and polish it and keep it clean, it’s going to be fine. These were built as kid’s toys, but today we’re talking about them now as a collectible by adults.”

Although Durable did develop a prototype bank with a key that would unlock the mechanism, that bank never entered production. The only way to make a withdrawal is to make at least $10 in deposits. “People try to break the bank open,” said Zani, “but if you were to do that, the bank would not work again. Sometimes you see banks on eBay with the tabs bent on the bank’s base. That was an indication that somebody tried to open the bank, wasn’t successful, and now wants to unload the bank on someone else. The idea here was that you put the money in there, and it’s forced savings. That was the concept. The one drawback that was ever voiced about the bank at any time said that they couldn’t get the money out if they needed to.”

The bank was also exported to foreign countries, and examples of the bank exist in Canada (as the “Maple Leaf Bank”), Mexico (as “El Tio Sam” banks that would take pesos and centavos), and the Netherlands (as a “guilder” register bank). Some charities commissioned Uncle Sam banks to encourage saving for the future. Zani’s book shows an Uncle Sam customized bank that stored pennies for the Federation of Jewish Charities of Philadelphia.

“The classic Uncle Sam register bank color is black,” said Zani. “If you asked someone to describe an Uncle Sam Bank to you, 99 percent of the time they’ll tell you that. All the other colors, I’ve been collecting colors for years, and I know there’s a few colors out there that exist that I don’t personally have, it’s a question of that’s part of the collecting thing. Some are chrome, some are silver, some with Uncle Sam’s picture on them during the war, that was there way of promoting country and pride.”

Durable manufactured the bank until 1958, when the company was purchased by Western Stamping. That company replaced the bank’s all-steel construction with heavy-gauge tin, replaced the painted instructions on the back of the unit with a sticky decal, and eventually replaced the bank’s American manufacturers with those from Japan. Other companies, such as Ohio Art, Buddy ‘L,’ Marx and Linemar, also manufactured Uncle Sam banks, or a generic equivalent of same (Linemar’s brand, for example, was branded the “Benjamin Franklin Bank”). But by the mid-1980s, the Uncle Sam 3-Register Coin Bank had disappeared from toy shelves.

“Collectors are most interested in the banks made before 1958 by Durable,” said Zani, “before the company was purchased by Western Stamping. Western Stamping continued to use the name of Durable Toy and Novelty, but after 1958 they added that the company was a division of Western Stamping. Two years later, Western Stamping started making the banks overseas.”

Today, a modern version of the 3-Coin Register Bank has returned to store shelves, as a Chicago-based company called RocketUSA built the Uncle Sam bank in several new colors and finishes. “We have manufactured the Uncle Sam banks since 2002,” said Cesar Vargas, Vice-President of Sales for RocketUSA. “It’s one of our top three items. The response we get from people who see the Uncle Sam bank for sale is, ‘I had one of those.’ We’ve gotten letters from [people] who were ecstatic that we still made them, and wondered if we could repair their old models that they still have.”

For Vargas, today’s purchasers of the Uncle Sam bank buy them for both nostalgia and thrift. The unit still locks at 25 cents, and the back of the unit now has a flat slot for folded bills, as opposed to the round hole for rolled-up dollars. The bank, which has RocketUSA’s logo to differentiate it from the antique banks, is made in China from heavy-gauge tin. “We made a nickel-plated version, which is not one of the original banks. The most popular one of the time was a black bank, which we don’t make – but we do make pink and light blue banks, though. Many of our banks are ending up on a lot of desktops as well, so it’s not being purchased for the children. The banks do, however, trigger old memories, and a lot of parents buy it for the new generation of collectors. And we still get people calling us asking us how to get the money out, that the bank is locked and it won’t let them have their money.”

In the meantime, Zani still collects Uncle Sam register banks, and is actively looking for new and unique variations for his archive. The one Uncle Sam bank he hopes to find, however, may have been produced in very small quantities, or not at all.

“Besides the 3-coin register banks, Durable made several different single-coin register banks,” said Zani. “My literature and sales catalogs show that there was in production a single-denomination 50-cent Uncle Sam Bank, literature in the Durable catalogs for over 20 years that advertises a bank that takes half dollars. In all my years of collecting, I had never seen that bank. I don’t know of anyone that has that bank, and I don’t believe it exists. Yet, in all my sales literature, which covers from 1906 to 1958, I see references to that bank. And I’m talking about over decades. This is an open offer – if anyone has this particular bank and is willing to sell it to me, I’ll give $1,000 to the first person who is willing to sell that bank to me.”

For more information on Zani’s collection of safes and Uncle Sam register banks, or to order copies of his book Uncle Sam’s Register Banks and Cash Registers Collectors Guide, visit his website. To order a modern Uncle Sam 3-Coin Register Bank from RocketUSA, visit their homepage.