What's your oldest US Note ?

Maryland 1/- One Shilling Remainder 1733

The arms of Maryland from a One Shilling note printed in 1733. The Latin legend on the note Crecite et Multiplicani translates to increase and multiply.

Maryland issued it's first paper money in 1733, and it had a curious reason for issuing it - each taxable person in Maryland who burned 150lbs of tobacco to prevent the depressing of the tobacco price was paid 30/-. The notes in seven denominations from 1/- to 20/- were authorised by the Commissioners of the Loan Office and backed with a purchase of Bank of England stock. These notes were intended to be issued until 29thSeptember 1764, after which they were retired. The plates for the notes were engraved in England, and the notes were printed on fine woven and watermarked paper that was made in England also and bore "Maryland" in the watermark.​

These notes are long horizontal notes, and the image above has had to be reduced to permit it to easily be viewed. They were printed in plates of five notes each, a curious feature of the notes is that in the lower left center where the denomination is there are stars denoting the plate position of the note - this note having four stars was the fourth note on the plate. These notes having been printed in large quantities were used for the 1733 issue, then unused sheets were used again for a 1740 and a final 1751 issue. Because of the quantities printed for each denomination they were stored in archives for a long time - becoming redundant with the 1756 note issue that was printed by Jonas Green of Annapolis. Subsequently a small quantity of them have been liberated from archives in Maryland and now represent the earliest paper money that is readily available for most collectors.

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The indent portion of the note, like many early banknotes a portion of the note was kept in an account book, and the note was cut out by hand using a sharp blade usually with a wavy pattern to make the cut unique to the note as a guarantee that it was original.
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1899 $5 Silver Certificate - F
1917 $1 United States Note - AU
1918 $1 Federal Reserve Bank Note - VG

 

Great mini-presentation scottishmoney! And a very attractive note. Where did you pick one of these up and was it reasonably priced?

 

Both notes are from 1862

 

Nice Reb notes. I never saw the Misouri before.

 

Here are my two oldest notes:





The first one is a 1758 10 pound note from the colony of New York and the second one is a 20 Shilling note from the Colony of Delaware, printed by Benjamin Franklin and David Hall.

 

Obsolete, those are very nice examples of colonial notes. Thanks for sharing.

 

Your welcome.

 

I'm not much of a Note collector, but my oldest issued in the U.S. is likely an unissued $3 Herman Ely note. My oldest note issued by the Federal Government is a 4th series Fractional.

 

86 Martha SC. Basically traded a roll of silver eagles for it.

 

Hey, just a few days ago I posted a scan of Martha's portrait on a different thread:
http://www.cointalk.com/t176715/#post1187427

 

I think the roll of silver eagles was a good trade for this note in that condition. Nice pickup!

 

One of the fascinating aspects of collecting colonial era currency is finding the different names that these places went by back then - Delaware was a autonomous province of Pennsylvania up until the mid 1760s and notice that it is referred to as the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex upon Delaware on the note. Similarly Rhode Island is referred to as "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" - which curiously still is the full legal name of the state - but the rest is conveniently lopped off. Massachusetts was then known as "Massachusetts-Bay"