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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;gsalexan, post: 2020356, member: 24274&quot;]Yes, that is the same vignette -- good eyes! I went back through the ABN Archive Series and two other matches also show up: the Battle of Bunker Hill scene (in the 1987 portfolio) and the indians (in the 1990 portfolio) both on the Omaha &amp; Chicago note.</p><p><br /></p><p>As to reuse of vignettes and ornaments from other bank note companies as they joined ABN, most of the time they were left unaltered. You often see plates with the original vignette catalog number crossed out and a longer ABN catalog number added underneath as they were processed. Unless there was a compelling reason to re-engrave something, maybe at the request of a client (who would have paid extra), they didn&#039;t go out of the way to change things. I can only think of one vignette where the scale was changed (enlarged) and that was done in the modern era. Probably the most frequent alteration was cropping -- putting a portrait in an oval, for instance -- but that wouldn&#039;t necessarily require an engraver if it could be done mechanically. I&#039;d actually like to learn more about that part of the transfer process. If you do comparative scans of vignettes that appear on obsolete notes and the same vignettes that appear on, say, a stock certificate from the 1940s they typically line up precisely.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Way to go Darryl! These are just cool, aren&#039;t they? I was lucky to get mine when silver was more affordable.</p><p><br /></p><p>Your close-ups show the limitations of the photographic transfer process. The eagle is a good example. You can see how the really fine lines get muddy in comparison to the engraved print. Also, if you examine the script lettering you&#039;ll see that it drops away in spots on the plate; it&#039;s just not possible to hold those tight lines on a photo without everything else getting dark. And that&#039;s exactly why engraving was such a great anti-counterfeiting measure.</p><p><br /></p><p>And yes, Chris, I concur that a print from one of these plates would be much inferior to a print from an original plate. But they did as good a job as possible with the technology at hand. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]365544[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]365543[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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