Innehållsförteckning för April 2025 från Banknote Reporter

If you use Google Maps or MapQuest to locate the home of the First National Bank of Union Mills in Pennsylvania, you will be directed to a very small city of that name in Union Township within Mifflin County. It is located a mile due east of Belleville in the central part of the state. The northern part of the town is anchored by the Union Mill facility, a division of Chemgro, an agricultural seed and fertilizer operation that employs about 20 people. The town has no other commercial facilities, which otherwise consist of a few houses. That settlement didn’t even exist in 1863 when the bank was chartered. The Union Mills of interest to us was a borough that originated in the 1780s in Erie County, some 22 miles…

Zambia The country’s new 500-kwacha note is one of six bank notes (K10, K20, K50, K100, K200, and K500) that embrace Zambia’s cultural heritage and natural beauty. The front of the notes depicts a flying African Fish Eagle in the foreground with one of Zambia’s important economic sectors in the background. The reverse showcases six of the country’s key waterfalls alongside local flora and fauna. The Bahamas Among the images displayed on the island nation’s new $1 note are a watermark of former Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Sir Lynden O. Pindling, on the front and an illustration of a drum major leading the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s marching band on the back. Burundi Considered the largest-sized bank note ever made, this commemorative note remembers the 50th anniversary of the…

Adam Stroup has a particular talent for distinguishing between the overprints from the three manufacturers that made the plates used to print the bank information on “Series of 1929” national bank notes. It was he who brought these type 1 and 2 notes from the First National Bank of Portland, Pennsylvania, charter 13606 to my attention. They carry overprints from a set of six 1-subject chrome-plated copper plates made in-house at the BEP from 1931 through 1934. The big deal is that James Simek and I published a complete list of the banks that received the BEP overprints, but the Portland bank is missing from our list. Counting the Portland, such plates were made for only 108 banks in the country. The Portland notes sport bank names set in a…

A reader recently wrote, “Very few merchants accept $100 bills even though inflation has made them more common. More and more merchants who accept larger notes are declining to accept the older $100 bills due to lack of security features and counterfeiting of most older bill designs. As the dollar declines in value, I wonder if we will see $500 bills during my lifetime. Or will paper money be made obsolete by digital dollars?” One of the problems with our physical currency is just how far our currency system is behind compared to countries elsewhere around the world. Not only have we failed to withdraw the $1 bank note in favor of a coin of the same value, but some countries have even higher denomination coins in circulation. Some of…

For 33 years, Debbie Marriott worked as a bank note designer for the Bank of England and served as the company’s first female paper money artist. Upon her retirement, Bank Note Reporter interviewed the artist about her groundbreaking career. Questions and answers have been consolidated for article length. The full interview can be found at numismaticnews.net. On the beginnings of her bank note career: When I left art college, I worked in a small commercial printing company as a designer. Here, I learnt to use computer programs for design (something which was not available at the time when I studied) and combined my fine art knowledge with graphics and product design. In 1989, I applied for a Junior Artist Designer role advertised in the "Arts Job" section of the Guardian…

The present article is a continuation of a previous piece (see “An Iconographic Study of Cuban Bank Notes Issued During the 19th Century” in the March 2025 issue of Bank Note Reporter) devoted to an iconographic study of the Spanish colonial bank note issues made in Cuba. This article discusses messages and symbolic elements introduced in 1961 Cuban bank notes. On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolution succeeded in overthrowing Batista’s tyrannic government, which had seized power in 1952 after a coup d’état. Until then, all Cuban currency had been produced abroad. In fact, the bank notes issued in 1959 and 1960 were a mere continuation of the existing ones, with the only change being the signatures of those now occupying the presidency of the Cuban National Bank and the…

There have been only 27 note-issuing banks in Arizona. To date, notes are reported from all but one of them, the First National Bank of Prescott, charter 3122. Located in central Arizona, the city of Prescott served as the capital of Arizona Territory from 1877 to 1889. The town was in America’s Wild West. Famous residents included gambler Doc Holliday and lawman Virgil Earp, who lived there in the late 1870s and early 1880s before their infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881. The National Bank of Prescott was the third chartered in the Territory and was a “Series of 1882” brown back-only issuer. The total emission from the bank was 225 10-10-10-20 sheets (900 notes). This was all shipped to the bank on March 15, 1884. The bank…

In this article, we will look at advertising notes that closely mimic U.S. Treasury issued currency. When the Treasury started issuing currency in and around the 1860s, it was done to replace privately issued notes. These notes had no value because of insolvency due to widespread bank and commercial failures. Before 1862, the only Treasury-issued money was coins with intrinsic value (gold, silver, and copper). In 1864, Congress prohibited private money "intended for use as current money." However, the courts have frequently upheld the private issuance of coins or paper money if it circulated locally or was redeemable in goods or services and not in dollars. So, kind of a tightrope. There was a short period when federally and privately issued currency coexisted. Private concerns often produced notes that mimicked…