19th century intaglio checks

He looks so ominous peering out from that big X over his eye! Quite a piece you have there!

 

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Very nice -- I would assume its a Bureau portrait, but I can't see an imprint.

 

Found another nice check over the weekend, this one printed by Continental Bank Note. I'm always happy when I can pick these up for under $10.

 

Bare Booby Alert! :thumb:

The check is very nice also. I don't know anything about old checks. Were checks issued to a payee at a specific bank? It looks like it was made payable to an individual at a specific bank.

 

Clay, I'm not sure how funds were transferred by check in the 19th century, but I would assume it was similar to how we do it now. The difference is that banks back then didn't have routing numbers, so I think you had to indicate the bank where the funds were going to be deposited. Unless you were pulling out cash. Anybody up on historic banking practices?

 

Something for Father's Day: the father of our country! Just picked up this nice Continental Bank Note item the other day. Not a check really -- just a receipt of payment. It surprises me that a company would go to all the expense of printing engraved receipts, but perhaps it was an indication of status.

Anyone have anything new to post here?

 

Customer service certainly isn't what it used to be. That's a fine addition to your collection. Have you any details on who may have engraved the portrait?

 

For those of you who may not have been following lettow's extended quiz/contest regarding the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, he concluded it with a final series of questions on portraits that appeared on BEP-produced checks. There are some fantastic scans of these checks posted on that thread --
http://www.cointalk.com/t210009/#post1494971 -- including several that were shared earlier on this one.

 

I picked up three nice additions to my check collection in the past couple weeks. All of them are steel engraved and the first two were definitely printed in the same time period as obsolete bank notes and share the same vignettes.

The Bank of Ulster certificate of deposit from Saugerties, NY was issued in 1862. The printer was Toppan, Carpenter, Casilear & Co., which existed between 1850-57 and was one of the founding members of American Bank Note in 1858.

Another founding member, Rawdon, Wright & Hatch, printed the blue 1856 check issued for $1,000 in Boston. This was the monthly payment for the lease of the Sullivan Railroad, a shortline railroad that ran about 25 miles through New Hampshire.

 

I think this Clinton National Bank check is one of my favorites. Issued in 1890 in Clinton, New Jersey, the vignettes are beautifully engraved by American Bank Note Co. I would guess that the Clinton NB also issued federal banknotes -- does anyone have a corresponding National they could post?

 

The latest addition - an 1875 check from the 7th National Bank of Philadelphia. The check itself is pretty drab but I picked it up for the imprinted revenue. This is cataloged as RN-J5, and was printed by Joseph R. Carpenter of Philadelphia -- who also produced some of our fractional currency around the same period. Not many of these stamped revenues are intaglio engraved and this one is a very nice design, imo.

 

I found another check from the obscure August Gast Bank Note Co., which is covered back on #8 of this thread. The check is from the First National Bank of Albia, Iowa. I have no idea who John A. Drake is but he sure looks like a crab apple. Is this what too much banking does to you?

 

I hate writing checks, but if I had checks with artwork like many of these, it might make that activity (almost) enjoyable:smile

 

Found another old check yesterday, printed by Western Bank Note, with an interesting vignette. Dickenson, Leach & Co. was a Chicago distillery, so I'm assuming the contraption depicted is a still. It doesn't have the coil of tubing that most stills have, so this must be the high-end model.

 

I picked up a nice one today, from Medina, NY, issued April 18, 1861 -- less than a week after the start of the Civil War. Since this printer's insignia is Danforth, Wright & Co., it must have been printed between 1853-58. I really like the locomotive on this one.

 

That's a nice one! Out of curiosity I looked up the town online.

Today's Medina Savings and Loan has a brief historical statement about banking then and how their bank came about in the late 1880s.

Medina also has a somewhat extensive railroad museum for a small town.

 

Cool! Back in the day, Medina had to be a crossroads for a couple major rail lines -- hence the train vignette.

 

Clearly different, but a very similar model of train engine appeared on this NY & Harlem Rail Road company certificate. The foreground with patches of rock and the hilly background, even seem similar with a white area behind the smokestack and tree line framing the top edge. Perhaps the vignette was recycled for the design of the stock certificate when ABNCo needed to draft up this certificate.



Image from scripophily.net

 

Very similar! And since Danforth Wright was one of the original firmed that merged to create ABN, the original vignette would have been easy to reuse. What do you bet it was cropped into an oval from a larger version.

 

Been meaning to post several new checks I picked up recently. All three of these were made out by Mark Skinner, a prominent lawyer, jurist and later real estate tycoon in Chicago. From the 1850s to 1886, Skinner acted as financial correspondent -- sort of a personal banker -- for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, signing some sizable checks for loans, legal services and other company business.

The first two checks were engraved by Western Bank Note. I really like the Indian buffalo hunt vignette and this would have been from a time when bison still ran on the plains. The check also shows Skinners monogram -- typically the spot where they pasted the revenue stamp, so I'm glad this one got stuck in the corner. The other, for the hefty sum of $10,000 in 1874, shows an allegorical figure of Trade holding a ship.