Banknote Reporter August 2022

This month we will continue our visit to Ohio to see the home of perhaps the most impressively eye-appealing $5 Brown Back in my collection. So, from Woodsfield in the east (last month), we’ll head west towards the Indiana border to check out historic St. Marys, Ohio. Let’s go! St. Marys is a city in Auglaize County, Ohio, located 11 miles west of Wapakoneta and 20 miles east of the Indiana state line. It is reached via I-75 and U.S. Route 33. The current population is around 8,500. St. Marys is located on and named for the St. Marys River, a 99-mile waterway that flows from central Ohio to Fort Wayne, Indiana. During the colonial period, the river was important for the transportation of supplies for General Anthony Wayne, and, as what…

The $1 dollar Bank of Upper Canada note illustrated here bearing a plate date of Jan. 1, 1861, is a truly significant early piece of Canadian currency. The Province of Upper Canada was an irregularly shaped sprawling region in what is now eastern Canada that looks on a map like a profile of someone’s westward leaning lower leg, toes facing west, that is stepping on lakes Erie and Onterio. Its northern boundary was the divide that separates lands to the south within the province from those to the north that drain to Hudson Bay. Quebec Province bordered it to the northeast. See the map in the Upper Canada wiki. It was established by Great Britain in 1791. Much of it was settled by Loyalist refugees from the United States after the American…

Mark Drengson, the prime mover behind the Society of Paper Money Collector’s Bank and Bankers Database website, acquired this number 1 Series of 1882 $5 East Grand Forks jewel from the April 2018 Heritage sale of the Bill Gale collection. Notes from banks in satellite communities adjacent to well-known large burgs always have been a favorite of mine because the banks tend to be small and notes from them scarce. East Grand Forks, a town of just over 8,000 people and sister city to Grand Forks, North Dakota, is located directly east across the Red River from Grand Forks. This East Grand Forks $5, which was folded into eights, probably was carried by one of the signers, thus accounting for its survival. The grand statistics for the bank are these:…

Have you ever encountered a $2 bill with the corners torn off? I haven’t, but then again I rarely see any $2 bills. Not seeing $2 bills in circulation is not an uncommon experience, either now or throughout the denomination’s history. In 1962, when Kalvart K. Tidwell wrote “The Two Dollar Bill” for the May 1962 issue of Coins magazine, few were ever lucky (or unlucky) enough to encounter $2 notes on a regular basis. “Not long ago a customer handed the clerk a bill to pay for the item in question,” Tidwell wrote. “The young lady stopped short, examined the note closely and asked, ‘Is this real money?’ “After she was assured that it was real, good and ordinary U.S. currency in common use, she hesitantly rang up the sale amount and…

Greg Alexander brought this Series of 1875 $5 to my attention with Berkshire engraved in a very attractive font. The Berkshire Mountains and county of western Massachusetts are named for Berkshire County in England, site of Windsor Castle west of London. North Adams is in the northern part of the country. The thing that caught Greg’s attention was that the four subjects on the plate from which this proof had been lifted were reentered to refurbish the plate so little stars were placed to the left of the upper plate letters to signify the reentry. 31,336 sheets of $5 Series of 1875 notes were issued from the bank so the A-B-C-D plate became worn and had to be reentered. Reentry signifies that rolls with the vignettes standing in relief on…

June 21, WASHINGTON – Today, ahead of Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen’s visit to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, President Joe Biden announced the appointment of Lynn Malerba, Lifetime Chief of the Mohegan Tribe, to serve as Treasurer of the United States. Chief Malerba is the first Native American to serve as the nation’s Treasurer. To underscore the Department’s commitment to Tribal nations, Treasury also announced the establishment of a new Office of Tribal and Native Affairs. The new office will be led by the new Treasurer and coordinate Tribal relations across the Department. Chief Malerba became the 18th Chief of the Mohegan Tribe in 2010 and is the first woman to serve in this position in the Tribe’s modern history. She previously served as a member…