By Brad Ciociola – Currency Specialist, Stack’s Bowers Galleries ……
A rare and highly desirable “Black Back” Series of 1880 $50 Silver Certificate of Deposit, formerly from the Joel R. Anderson Collection, is being featured in the Stack’s Bowers Galleries November 2020 United States Currency auction in lot 7093.
The Fr.329 is graded About New 53 PPQ by PCGS Currency and is the finest graded of the catalog number. Just 120,000 examples of this variety were printed; today around 35 are known to survive. The portrait of Edward Everett is at right. Engraved signatures of Treasury officials Rosecrans and Nebeker are stacked to the bottom right of center. Blue printed serial numbers appear in panels at bottom left and top right.
Edward Everett is best remembered as an orator from Massachusetts, although he held a number of political offices. It was Everett who, at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Battlefield in 1863, gave a two-hour speech before Lincoln made his Gettysburg Address, which the president said would be little remembered. It became a classic, of course, while what Everett had to say is unfamiliar except to the most dedicated student of Civil War trivia.
These 1880 Silver Certificates of Deposit get their “Black Back” nickname from the darkly printed open back designs found on them. For this type “SILVER” is boldly portrayed in dark panels across the center with “UNITED STATES” above and the denomination below.
This note last traded for $93,000 in our February 2018 offering of the Joel R. Anderson Collection Part IV. With the increased demand for quality and rarity when it comes to currency collecting, we expect that figure to be easily reached or even exceeded in November’s sale.
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To view all the United States coins, medals, tokens and paper money offered in the Stack’s Bowers Galleries November 2020 auction visit StacksBowers.com. For more information call 800-458-4646 or email [email protected].
