1771 North Carolina duck note. An example of the dumpster fire that was NC Colonial money

If the other day I showed you an example of the gold standard when it came to Colonial money, in the form of a Maryland note, today I will be doing the opposite....North Carolina Colonial currency was an absolute dumpster fire.

They started out terrible by producing handwritten notes for the first 20 plus years. Counterfeiting was so bad, and the colony knew it, but it took them more than 20 years to address the problem and get an actual printer to make their notes.



And even when they switched to printing their notes, as you can see from mine, security was never a priority. Even by Colonial era money standards, that's a pretty lazy attempt at a secure paper currency.

A duck might look cool, but it ain't much security if a 10 year old can make a close copy of it. They did try other symbols but the efforts were always...basic.

Add to that the bad habits of occasionally overprinting, and also "redeeming" notes and instead of destroying them, sneaking around the public's back and re-releasing the old notes into circulation, and yeah, you see the problem.

In colonial America if someone walked into your store in North Carolina and pulled out one of these, you were not going to give them face value in goods, or anywhere near close. If you were feeling generous you might let them walk out with goods worth half the value of that note. But that's because you knew that your colonial government was shifty and abused their money making and distribution authority.

It also didn't help that unlike many other colonies, to Counterfeit was not death in North Carolina. A counterfeiter would just loose an ear... And many a counterfeiter thought that that was a good deal and applied their trade in North Carolina with gusto.

 

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It’s so satisfying to have a note, a piece of history from 1771 that has an EPQ and a high grade.