5¢ bill

[whitetail]

In Civil War times, most citizens of the Union states were forced to make ends meet on less than a dollar a day. Compounding the misfortune, the strife of war made small coinage so scarce that millions had to resort to using postage stamps to pay for everyday transactions. This unduly strained local post office revenues and the national economy in

Comments

[schnee]

Interesting! Wikipedia has a short article on these, but it could benefit from expansion.

Reading that one, BTW, it's a funny coincidence that it mentions the Clark controversy; I just recently heard about that for the first time. (I'm not sure where anymore, but I recall it was in the context of the United States Assay Commission; it may well have been in Hansen's book "Planet America", which I finished a while ago.)

[sabotlours]

When I was in China a decade ago I got some dollars exchanged for yuan. They figured the amount so closely that I ended up with a 1/100 of a Yuan note. Since the exchange rate was about 7:1, I figured the note was worth about 0.15 cents.

[sunfire]

That is a fascinating piece of currency!

[dagz]

Cool, i've never seen one of those!

[furahi]

How very interesting!