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Posted
On 9/19/2025 at 6:45 PM, Armybrat said:

Some odds & ends paper my Dad picked up during the 1960s & 70s

 

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Man. Like those military notes, I wonder if the slightly uneven eyes were a counterfeit-beating measure. Were those used to avoid having to ship heavy coins abroad?

Those Chihuahua notes from the start of the Revolución, I kind of wonder if they ever got cashed in for full value. But I read that Villa, starting out, was paying his men in gold pesos. Only later did he print so much paper money that it dropped in value iirc.

Texas money-- any idea what was on the triangular cut-out?

Confederate-- as a child I remember my grandmother taking three CSA $20 bills out of hiding to show to me. At the time I thought a great-great-grandaddy Canecutter had ridden the dusty trail home with them stashed in a saddle bag. Now I realize maybe my own grandad bought them a century later in the little tobacco/paperback/porn magazine kiosk that once stood on Broad Street in downtown Selma.

Don't know if they're still stashed in her old house. They looked nice, so maybe they were Union counterfeits.

I once read that on the eve of Lee's surrender, the CSA Dollar was running about 70 to 1 to the US Dollar (the real one, not the Greenback.) So, at the low point of the Confederacy, you could theoretically use 1400 doomed bumwad dollars to get an ounce of gold. I doubt it ever happened, but I am sure that eggs or other perishables changed hands in the currency up until the end, and maybe after-- say it's 1865, and you read that clause about how they could be cashed in "6 months after a ratification of a treaty of peace," well, it doesn't say anything about winning, who knows if the Yankees might honor it for some number of cents on the dollar? Makes as much sense as holding onto some NFT.

Posted

RE: Texas $10 bill….. I read somewhere that when Texas joined the Union, the Republic’s currency was physically canceled by punching out the triangles. Obviously, not all Texans turned theirs in for cancellation.

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Posted
14 minutes ago, Armybrat said:

RE: Texas $10 bill….. I read somewhere that when Texas joined the Union, the Republic’s currency was physically canceled by punching out the triangles. Obviously, not all Texans turned theirs in for cancellation.

These cuts were indeed made when the notes were turned in for redemption, which meant gold back in those days. The Republic of Texas did everything they could to default on these obligations, and avoided redeeming them. As a result, these sold on the market for just a few cents on the dollar, to any speculator who wanted to bet on them being paid eventually. When Texas joined the Union, the USA figured that it was not acceptable to default on obligations of what would now be part of the Union, and the money (gold!) was found to finally redeem them, and the speculators came out very well in the end.

Nearly all of these are cancelled, but not all the cancellations had a piece cut out like that, the nicest ones just had the cuts in the note, but not into multiple parts, or pieces removed, etc. A really nice one is coming up for sale in a couple weeks, this shows the full note design.

https://currency.ha.com/itm/obsoletes-by-state/texas/austin-tx-republic-of-texas-10-jan-1-1840-cr-a5-medlar-25-pmg-choice-about-unc-58-epq/a/3599-20137.s

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Posted

Thanks - that clarifies what I remember.

That $1 Texas bill is in such bad shape it’s difficult to determine if it was cut in any manner. 
Maybe not.

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