The beauty is in the details... (currency)

Earlier today I posted a picture of one of my bills on another thread. When looking at this blown up picture I noticed a few things about the bill I hadn't seen when holding the bill in hand. I decided to pull out a handful of bills and look at the details of each. These bills are works of art and I think we can sometimes miss all the details that should be appreciated.
For this contest I ask that you take out a bill (any US currency , current or obsolete) and study it. See if you find anything you hadn't noticed before. Once you are done all you need to do is post a picture of the bill and a share a detail that interests you.
for example-
National currency notes were produced for many smaller banks and that banks charter number was printed twice on the front of the bill. (the large style bills had this number in a different color like the blue below)

The interesting thing on these older bills is that each one was designed so that the charter number was also built into the outer frame of the bill. Does this mean they had 10,000 different designs, one for each charter?! (click on picture below to see what I am talking about)

 

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Winner will be randomly selected from all entries that post and picture and describe some part of the bill.

winner will recieve the following...
1945D dime, 1944 dime, 2006 star note. (sorry-didn't have a better currency prize)

 

Heavy block letters

A while back the topic came up here at CT of heavily inked block letters on SNs / font varieties of block letters on SNs. After reading a little about them I came across these two $5 notes and decided to pick them up for my collection. It's sort of a minor detail easily missed and something I was glad to spot so I could own examples similar to those discussed in the links.

Heavy "A" - Series 1953 $5 Silver Certificate: (below are each SN from this note)









Heavy "A" - Series 1963 $5 Red Seal: (below are each SN from this note)







Thanks for the chance at the contest. :thumb:

 

My one and only red seal $2 bill. I realized there's a shadow of a person(?) in one of the windows!

 

here is a 20 dollar candian bill i had and found out it had a weird variety where the hair looked like a demon, I don't have the demon one but still found pretty interesting a comparison can be seen here http://home.comcast.net/~jtfrommd/Stuff/DevilFace3.JPG
and here's my bill.. normal hair

 

At first glance these look like regular German inflation banknotes from 1923...



Until you flip them over and see that they are printed on old catalog stock...

 

HiHo that's cool.
I've seen Obsoletes like that too.

 

I read the type on the front:


(For use only in United States Military Establisments By United States Authorized Personnel In Accordance With Applicable Rules and Regulations)

I dont think the Black Market cared that it said that

 

hiho: that's a very interesting piece. first time seeing something like this for me. thanks for sharing. did they have a paper shortage as well?

 

I think it's cool that the vignette on the 1896 $1 Silver Certificate was engraved using the view from the Arlington House (Lee's Mansion) in Virginia as the background.



I visited the Mansion last Spring and took this photo from the front porch.
The trees are bigger and there are more building in DC now than back in the 1890's, but it was really cool seeing that background scene in real life. Imagine having this view from your front porch!



The Arlington House was the home of Robert E. Lee and his family for 30 years and is uniquely associated with the Washington and Custis families. George Washington Parke Custis built the house to be his home and a memorial to George Washington, his step-grandfather.



The design for the 1896 $1 Silver Certificate note, entitled History Instructing Youth, shows a female History with a young student standing beside her, gesturing to an open book of history before her. An olive branch rests against the book, holding it open to show the Constitution of the United States upon the page.

Some in the late 1890's complained that the word "Tranquility" was misspelled on that engraved page (the common spelling at the time put 2 L's in Tranquillity). However in the original constitution Tranquility had 1 L. Since the early 1900's that word has gone back to the single L spelling.

The outside border of the note shows 23 wreaths, each bearing the name of a noteworthy American - not surprisingly starting with Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, but also including such names as poet Henry Longfellow, inventor Robert Fulton, and author Nathaniel Hawthorne, among many others. Some of the names listed are so obscure now that many today would struggle to know their claim to fame (e.g. Bancroft).



It is certainly difficult to beat the sheer beauty, artistry, and rich detail of this note.
Many fail to notice the US flag draped over the lap of the female figure representing History.



I also think it's interesting that bankers hated these notes, as they became smudgy & suspicious looking with little use and tellers struggled to quickly identify the denomination when counting stacks. Collectors liked them though and many were pulled out of circulation and saved due to their unique look. They sold for a 30 cent premium from currency/coin dealers soon after issue. The 1896 Educational issue was fairly quickly replaced (3 years later) by the famous 1899 Black Eagle note.

By the way, I own this particular note. It's still one of my favorite currency designs ever.

 

Indeed these are wonderful notes with some really fantastic vignettes..one additional thought on the Educational Series is that they are the only notes issued by the United States since 1861 that bear no lathe work on the face of the note!

One other thought as well is that Thomas F. Morris opposed the original designs and he is later credited for changing the border to what is is now...just a beautiful piece of work.
I feel proud to say that I own a very special vignette from the Thomas F. Morris collection that was passed down to his son T.F. Morris Jr. and then to a collector Dr. Jackson. From there the vignette made it to me around 25 years later.


RickieB

 

WingedLiberty:
Very cool post. Of course we love that note! Lee's mansion sits on a greater parcel of property he owned and which was seized near the end of the Civil War, to become Arlington National Cemetery. They buried the dead in Lee's front yard! The first to be buried as in May 1864, even though the end of the conflict wasn't until April 1865 (or June of that year with the last shot story). You can see period images and the view from the tombstones looking back at Lee's mansion here.
​

Also your post pointing out the view on currency reminded me of my submission to a recent CT contest held by ikandiggit. I dropped in Google street view scenes on the backs of modern US notes.
​

 

Nice added facts RickieB and Krispy!!

The walk up the hill to the mansion was beautiful. It was quite a climb on thousands of feet of sidewalks and stairs ... through the acres and acres of well maintained graves. One of the more interesting short daytrips I've done.

 

Cool contest! I went and looked through my collection of paper money, and noticed some interesting things on my 1988 Eastern Caribbean One Dollar bill. On the obverse, to the left, there's a surfer! I never noticed that before Also, on the reverse, at the very bottom, it says "THOMAS DE LA RUE AND COMPANY LIMITED". Odd thing to find on a dollar bill, isn't it?

 

De La Rue from Wikipedia.org

 

Not at all odd.. thats the company that printed the Banknote..

RB

 

Oh, okay. Well, I've never seen anything like that on American or Canadian dollars. Maybe I'll go look at my American collection again to see if anything like that is on it. Learn something new every day.

 

Well, nothing about Crane and Company on it.

Out of curiousity, when does this contest end?

 

Crane & Co. are a papermaker. They don't print banknotes. The BEP currently prints US banknotes. Current notes are printed at one of two BEP facilities: BEP Fort Worth, Texas and BEP Washington D.C.

 

I didn't put an end time on it yet because I wanted to give everyone a chance to look at bills and scan. I wasn't sure how long that would take. I also wanted to make sure that I had at least a handful of entries. If I follow the rules I set in the original post I only have 4 entries so far (krispy, stealer, Duke, Winged).

How about it will end Fri Sept 24th (7pm pacific).