Blogs

In our article, Peter Huntoon and I call 1915 the end of the era when old style font presses were used to make up replacement sheets of nationals.  At the time it was written, we had not found a single Plain Back replacement.  That has changed, but the picture is somewhat fuzzy.

Replacement 1902 Plain Back with "hybrid" fonts in the serial numbers. Note the old style 2 and 3, and newer looking 4s.

Series 1882 Date Back replacements are very scarce.  Of the 1700 or so listed in the Heritage Archives (which has some duplication) and the 1100 imaged notes in the NBN Census (which includes a certain amount of overlap with the Heritage archives), I have been able to locate only four replacement notes.  Here are the statistics for this type:

One of four known 1882 Date Back replacements. Note how obvious is the old style font in the bank serial number.

I would have to say that Date Backs (both 1882 and 1902) are my favorite types of large size replacement nationals.  That’s because as replacements they’re scarcer than most other types, yet they’re less expensively priced compared to other types when they come up for sale.  Further, there is no ambiguity about when you find one with the old style font.  Recall that for Red Seals and Brown Backs, the earliest of those used the old style serial number fonts, and you need to do a little homework to determine the date of printing.  By contrast, any Date Ba

One of my favorite replacement notes. The 2, 3 and 4s in the serial numbers make it instantly recongnizable as a replacement.

Brown Backs are among the more difficult types to be found as replacement notes.  Here is why.  Recall that #1 notes by far constitute the largest percentage of surviving replacement notes.  They were the most apt to be misprinted or damaged, and needed to be replaced before shipping to their destination banks.  While #1 Brown Backs are plentiful from the pre-1902 era, very few exist from 1903 to 1908, when they were discontinued.  Any new banks that formed after 1902 (which would require notes starting with #1) would be of the third charter style, namely Red Seals.

The top note is a replacement from a 10-10-10-10 sheet printed in 1907. A closely numbered regular production note is below.

The world of large size replacement nationals is somewhat inverted.  Rare is common, and common is rare.  For instance, Red Seals are highly prized among collectors of nationals because they are considerably scarcer than their Blue Seal counterparts.  Not so with LSRNs.  Of the 80 replacements documented from the relevant time period, half are Red Seals.  Why?  Because #1 notes were the most commonly damaged and needed to be replaced, and a good percentage of Red Seals that survive were saved as #1 souvenirs.  Over 60% of all the documented replacements ar

Replacement Red Seal printed in 1908. The droopy 2 and long-handled 4s in the Treasury Serial Number are of the old style font.

This is the first in a series of weekly blogs I will be writing about Large Size Replacement Nationals.  Peter Huntoon and I wrote an article ("Identification of Series of 1882 and 1902 National Bank Replacement Notes Printed in the 1903-1915 Period") in late June that is published in the September-October edition of Paper Money, which is viewable to registered members.  SPMC members who have not yet set up their online accounts can do so

Replacement Red Seal, indicated by the old style serial number font used after the conversion to new fonts.

If you have been reading BNR and the recently issue of Paper Money, you will see that Fred Reed had done a wonderful job of outlining how postage and then fractional currency came into being, the laws, the players, etc.  But when did it actually first begin circulating?  A law was signed into service on July 17, 1862 that began postage currency.  The notes were first issued on August 21, 1862 and lasted until May 29, 1863.  The first notes were printed entirely by the National Banknote Company (which was printing the postage stamps of the day) and came in sheets that had

August 21--150th Birthday of Postage Currency