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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;gsalexan, post: 2710965, member: 24274&quot;]Hey Dean, thanks for reviving this thread! I had forgotten about it, but there&#039;s some great info and images here. I think I&#039;ll add to it with one of ABNC&#039;s most impressive reprints. </p><p><br /></p><p>In 1979, ABN dug deep in their vault and pulled out an incredible printing plate from before the Civil War. It&#039;s termed a sample sheet and it is <b>massive</b> -- 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rawdon, Wright, Hatch &amp; 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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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&#039;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. </p><p><br /></p><p>Although this doesn&#039;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.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]612219[/ATTACH]</p><p>&nbsp;[ATTACH=full]612220[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]612221[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]612222[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]612223[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]612224[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]612225[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]612226[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]612227[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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