A Collector’s Dilemma

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In February 1922, Manos Klapakis established Arrow Auto Lines when he was granted a permit to operate an automobile stage line in Utah. Klapakis, whose full name was Manousos Georgios “Manos” Klapakis, was born on April 3, 1894, in Crete, Greece. Few details survive about his early life, although a 1917 article titled “Price Hotel man with huge bank roll enlists in Army” profiled him. It relates that “wearing a sixty-dollar suit of clothes and equipped with extra suits, shoes, silk shirts and various other kinds of haberdashery, Manousos Klapakis, wealthy hotel man of Price, walked into the local army recruiting office this morning [and] announced that he was ready to join Uncle Sam’s army.” Klapakis, who had become a naturalized American citizen, served in the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I.

A Captive Mine

The May 29, 1923, issue of the Deseret News (Salt Lake City) reported that the public utilities commission granted Arrow Auto Lines a permit to extend its lines seven miles and run buses between Price and Columbia. Four years earlier, the Columbia Steel Corporation incorporated the Utah Coal & Coke Company as a subsidiary to mine 4,000 acres of coal lands. It was a captive mine; in other words, the steel company used the coal instead of selling it.

To provide housing for the coal miners, the steel company began constructing the town of Columbia in 1922. In addition to houses, the company built bunk houses to accommodate single employees. Eventually there was a school, amusement hall, barber shop, confectionery, boarding house, and, of course, a company store.

The company issued tokens that are quite a bit different than most transportation tokens because, as its inscription indicates, the firm used them strictly to transport workers to the mine. Struck in brass, the 34mm token’s obverse inscription reads ARROW AUTO LINES INC./NOT TRANSFERABLE/SHIFT BUSS/PRICE, UTAH, and a large incuse number appears in the center. On the reverse, GOOD FOR ONE ROUND TRIP TO COLUMBIA, UT. is around the rim, with MINE WORKING DAYS ONLY below.

Fare Token

It would be interesting to know whether Arrow Auto Lines or the mining company issued the token. The way it was used was typical; when a miner boarded the bus in Price and paid for a round trip, he was given a token good for the return fare back to Price. Using tokens minimized the need for the driver to handle cash, and I am certain the incuse numbers on the tokens were placed there for accounting and control purposes.

The December 2008 issue of The Fare Box reported the token’s existence to members of the American Vecturist Association. It was given the catalog designation UT 625-A in The Atwood-Coffee Catalogue of United States and Canadian Transportation Tokens, a reference now in its 6th edition, with more recent editions available to members of the organization as PDFs. The previously unknown token came to the organization’s attention when an example was listed on eBay, and spirited bidding ran the price up to $610.

To Bid or Not to Bid? 

Shortly after the sale, collectors soon discovered that the piece was not unique, and the $250 catalog value was eventually lowered to $50. While it still isn’t known how many tokens were in the group, there were evidently quite a few because they are still offered for sale occasionally. This points to an often repeated scenario that occurs when a previously unknown token is offered for sale. An avid collector is faced with the dilemma of whether to keep bidding against other equally avid collectors. If he drops out, he might never own the token. However, if he outbids his competitors and buys it, it’s possible that the seller has more examples, which will eventually be offered for a lot less than the price he paid.

Bus Business

Arrow Auto Lines proved to be profitable, but evidently Klapakis was only briefly involved with the business. A young man named Nick Galanis was hired as a driver in 1923, and he was the subject of an article in the July 25, 1954, Salt Lake Tribune, which tells us that in 1926 he “borrowed $5,000 from his father-in-law and bought a half interest in the business from Nick Karras.” At the time, the business consisted of three buses, but the two men expanded the firm rapidly, and in 1938 the Carbon Freight Line was established as a subsidiary of the bus line. Four years later, it was announced that the company’s operators, Galanis and Karras, had decided to separate the two businesses, with Karras taking the bus line and Galanis the freight line.

In January 1955, a fire in the Arrow Auto Lines depot building destroyed 13 of the company’s 15 vehicles. Karras stated that although he had fleet insurance on his trucks, because of damage to the building and equipment, his overall coverage would be only about 10 percent of his loss. However, he survived the disaster, and the company was still operating in the early 1970s.

Club President

As for Klapakis, he was a member of the Greek-American Democratic Club of Carbon County, and in 1935 he was elected president of the group. He also had the rather dubious distinction of being the first person in Carbon County to have a property foreclosed by the Federal Home Loan Corporation for his failure to make payments on a $10,400 loan he made using the Athens Hotel building as collateral. He was later employed by the city of Price as head of its garbage department. He died on July 26, 1960, and was buried in Price.

I welcome readers’ comments. Write to me at P.O. Box 2866, La Plata, MD 20646. If a reply is desired, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

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A version of this article appears in the March 2026 issue of The Numismatist (money.org)