different, mostly political, jetons () were minted depicting the victories, ideals and aims. Specifically in the last quarter of the 16th century, where or "beggars" made important military contributions to the Dutch side and bookkeeping was already done without counters, the production in the North was just for propaganda. The mints and treasuries of the big estates in Central Europe used their own jetons and then had a number of them struck in gold and silver as New Year gifts for their employees, who in turn commissioned jetons with their own mottoes and coats-of-arms. In the sixteenth century the Czech Royal Treasury bought between two and three thousand pieces at the beginning of each year. As Arabic numerals and the zero came into use, "pen reckoning" gradually displaced "counter casting" as the common accounting method. Modern use Monetary use In the 21st century jetons continue to be used in some countries as substitutes for coins in coin-operated public telephones or vending machines, because automatic valuation of coins by machines is unreliable or impossible for several reasons. They are usually made of metal or hard plastic and are generally called tokens in English-speaking countries. In German the word refers specifically to casino tokens. In Polish the word , pronounced similarly to French , refers both to tokens used in vending machines, phones etc. and to those used in casinos. The word has the same use in Russian, as does the word in Romanian and in Estonian. However in Hungary the word is (somewhat dated) slang for money, particularly coins. Plastic jetons used to be used for paying the fare for the Star Ferry in Hong Kong. Leisure use Apart from their monetary use in casinos, jetons are used in card games, particularly in France but also in Denmark. They are traditionally made of wood of different shapes and sizes to represent different values such as 1, 5, 10, 50 or 100 points. For example, in traditional French games, jetons are round and usually worth 1 unit; fiches are long and rectangular in shape and may be worth 10 to 20 jetons; contrats are the short rectangular counters and may be worth, say, 100 units. The jetons are also stained or coloured so that each player can have his or her own colour. This facilitates scoring because players do not need to start with exactly the same number of counters. Nowadays plastic