Large Size
Notes
A selection of common, scarce and rare U.S. large size notes (i.e., currency, paper money); other numismatic items may be included. If you don't see what you're looking for, please submit your want list. Thank you.
The tens of thousands of privately-issued bank and scrip notes of the 1800s ranged in denomination from one-half cent to several thousand dollars. While today their collector value depends on a combination of rarity, condition and demand; their value when issued was solely depedent on the reputation of the issuing authority -- be it bank, railroad or Main Street apothecarian. In those days, when a note, might be worth every cent of its face value or might be worth nothing more than the paper on which it was printed, an entire industry sprang up to supply banks and merchants with accurate, timely information about which notes would pass current, which should be accepted only at a discount, and those from an issuer who had gone broken. In addition, because of the wealth of larcenous talent available for changing broken bank notes into good notes through the alteration of a bank of city name, or raising the denomination of a note from $1 to $10 by deft penmanship; those who handled the dizzying variety of paper money in circulation in the mid 19th Century needed books which listed and described the genuine issues of a particular bank. (It is, incidentally, from the common name of these paper money reporting services that the name Bank Note Reporter was derived for the monthly paper money newspaper . . .) The only restraints on the issue of paper money at that time were those which the individual states cared to apply, and such restraints were infrequent and ineffective. The Federal Government put an effective end to these halycon days of currency free-for-all in 1863, by imposing a 10% tax on outstanding notes; and later through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding the private issue of circulating media of exchange altogether. With that the Government of the United States of America attained a monopoly on the note-issuing function which it has maintained, except in localized emergency situations, to this day. -- Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money, by Chester L. Krause and Robert F. Lemke (2001) [previous links to the 2005 edition]
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