American Banknote Company

Regrettably ABNCo printed some of the finest banknotes in the world, but usually not for the United States - but rather their northern, southern, eastern and across the Pacific neighbours.

Czechoslovakia 5000 kcs 1920



In it's various incarnations with overprints for Slovakia and Bohemia it circulated until 1945. This note has wonderful background tinting that was accomplished with multiple printing passes - by comparison a very expensive printing technique by the standards of today. But for the time a means of counterfeit detection - this process was very difficult to align plates precisely.

 

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Beautiful note! I see it's punch cancelled "Specimen". I know ABNCo included a Czech note reprint as a bonus in the 1988 Archive portfolio, but I've never seen one. Could this be it?

 

GS - No, it is one of the probably several thousand examples that the Czech government released from storage during the communist era.

So ABNCo busied itself printing notes for foreign customers, given that the USA depended on the monopoly of the BEP to supply paper money there. In Canada there was so much business that ABNCo even opened a branch location in Ottawa. Canada and Mexico are unique in the early 20th century - lots of commercial banks with very colourful designs - some stock vignettes - but also many that were proprietary to the banks that issued them. This note was my first Canadian Charter acquisition:





CBoC used proprietary vignettes for it's issues, ie they owned the copyrights to the design and the vignettes. Most Canadian banks did keep their designs and vignettes proprietary, but OTOH Mexican banks tended to use stock images that were also used on banknotes from other countries.

 

Here is a note that was largely inspired from printing techniques that were developed in Homer Lee Banknote Company during the 1880's with multiple colours being applied to the note in separate printing passes:



Curiously though, with the exception of the centre vignettes on the obverse and reverse - the vignettes are not proprietary to Standard Bank of Canada, and they were also used on Uruguayan and Peruvian notes. The young miss smelling flowers is proprietary and a stunning image:

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A very unusual and unique vignette that is suggestive of a contemporary work of John Waterhouse titled "Soul of a Rose".

 

In the late teens of the 20th century ABNCo's Ottawa operation was spun off from the rest of the corporation and became known as "Canadian Bank Note Company" while retaining the previous business etc. The banknotes created for the various institutions continued to be printed, but this time with the imprint of the new company:

And of course they retained the proprietary vignettes for particular banks such as "Bank of Toronto"


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Without any semblance of doubt a 19th century design that served long even in reduced form after 1935 and until Charter notes were discontinued during WWII.

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This vignette, or rather, it's odd placement in the vertical of a horizontal note is rather curious. I conjecture that perhaps rather than it's placement being a result of tight space, that rather it was part of the design as a different anti-counterfeiting measure as this would create a challenge for a forger having to rotate a printing die.

This note is also my most recent note acquisition - I have been sort of out of circulation with collecting my themed notes lately, but this came across in a large collection of 19th century USA obsoletes and I had to have it. Curiously it was the only post 1875 note in the whole collection and was likely included by the previous owner because of the dated design.

 

SM: That is a wicked write up on the history behind these pieces... and they're amazing looking designs as well. I really appreciate what you have been sharing here. Thanks!

 

Fantastic notes, SM! Thank you so much for posting both the images and the background. I'm fairly certain I've seen a couple of the designs from Standard Bank note on other items. I'll do a little snooping.

You might be interested in this thread, which I posted last year: http://www.cointalk.com/t102361/

 

And another related thread, I'll tie-in here. No one ever commented on this one, so I'm not sure anyone saw it. Or maybe I was being snubbed for mispelling "American" in the header.
http://www.cointalk.com/t165585/

 

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Around 1955, I was about 12 years old, my Uncle went to Cuba and I was brought back a one peso bill like the one in the first post. To this day I still refer to it as the bill Uncle Frank got me from Cuba. He also got some loose change and I still have that also. Just a fond memory.

 

Hey Dean, thanks for reviving this thread! I had forgotten about it, but there's some great info and images here. I think I'll add to it with one of ABNC's most impressive reprints.

In 1979, ABN dug deep in their vault and pulled out an incredible printing plate from before the Civil War. It's termed a sample sheet and it is massive -- 22 x 28 inches. I have a flatbed scanner that will scan up to 11x17 and I still had to stitch together 4 scans. This is the largest engraved item I own.

Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson was the premier banknote house in the 1850s. They would eventually because the largest of the seven companies that consolidated to form American Bank Note in 1858. When they opened a branch in New Orleans, they needed a showpiece that spotlighted their engraving capabilities. This piece was very likely framed in a prominent place and used as a sales device.

998 of these reprints were produced on card stock. I think I paid something like $65 at the time, which was a lot for a college student. But well worth it. There are vignettes here that go back to the 1820s and a great many appear on obsolete bank notes, bank checks, and stock certificates. Among the small portraits, Washington and Franklin were cropped into ovals and used on the first U.S. postage stamps in 1847. You'll even see a U.S. silver dollar and a Spanish doubloon at the bottom. I could probably match three dozen images to other pieces in my collection.

Although this doesn't quite fit the criteria of a souvenir card, the Souvenir Card Collector Society assigned it a catalog number of FSO1979A -- a forerunner, semi-official card.

 

And then there's this ...

 

These arrived earlier this year. Finally bit the bullet and picked up a set. I can spend hours looking at the vignettes in these albums.



Complete American Bank Note Archive Series,issued from 1987 through 1992. Each of the vignette pages is housed in a special Mylar protector that was offered by the company at the time, at an extra cost. Each set includes twelve 8 1/2" by 11 1/4" pages of vignettes with four to ten vignettes per page. Important historical
information about each vignette is included with each volume.The 1988 set contains the special brown ABNC intaglio imprint of a 1919 Czechoslovakian note.

 

Amazing! Lucky guy.

 

Woo hoo, Steve! You got the complete set and the Czech specimen note -- well done! I don't even have that Czech note ... but I'm always on the lookout!

 

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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Another Russo-Asiatic -note.

 

Provincial Bank of Kwangtung Province, Canton 1918




Bank Of Communications, Shanghai. 1914

 

Congrats! They are a fantastic collection of vignettes, and I'm happy to see another set is preserved fully intact. It took me about 7-8 years, and some tips from forum friends, to locate and compile my complete set. It's a real treat for any collector of this material to have all of these in one's personal collection. I know you will treasure and enjoy it immensely!

For those curious, there is a CT thread with most of the vignettes scanned for your virtual enjoyment:

American Bank Note Company Achive Series