Inventors: Charles G. Shepard & Peter Adams Jr.
Patent number: 255090
Filing date: Feb 4, 1882
Issue date: Mar 1882

A haunting patent from 1882. This design for a money box that eats your coins actually went on to be produced and marketed as child’s toy ‘Greedy Nigger Boy’. Although the unique part of the patent is the lever operating the hand, making it seem as if the figure is eating each coin, the illustration still depicts racial stereotypes with crudely exaggerated features. Shepard & Adams are the real greedy boys here, happy to make money by maintaing racist ideologies.