Coins on American Notes Website
by Sam Kirby
If you are an admirer of American obsolete notes and Spanish colonial coins, the "Spanish Coins on American Notes" website offers a double treat for your numismatic palate. The "WWW exhibit" offers an overview of selected American obsolete notes and Spanish colonial coins, and includes a number of good quality digital images. The website can be found at www.unc.edu/~rcs/scoan.
The site’s home page provides a short introduction to the collecting area, and features links to sections on the types of coins and notes being exhibited, error and fraudulent notes, the references used to create the site, and other collecting organizations of interest.
On the Types of Spanish Coins page, the main types of Spanish colonial silver coins are listed and defined. They are cob, pillar, bust, and homeland. Cob coinage specifies coins which were made until the early 18th century. Pillar coinage, or milled coinage, was minted from 1732 until 1772. Bust Coinage was milled coinage produced from 1772 until independence, 1821-25. Homeland Spanish coinage was coinage which originated from Spain.
This section also featured a detailed listing of the bust coinage of Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. A table is provided for each country, and each includes the assayers’ marks and mintage date ranges for each denomination (1/2 real through 8 reales).
The Types of Notes page presents an overview of the many types of fiscal paper that were used as money during the most turbulent times of our country’s history. A few of these categories are bearer checks (checks made payable to the bearer with a printed denomination); bonds (an obligation in which a person or a corporation binds himself to pay a certain sum of money at a specified time); and certificates of deposit (a statement issued by a corporation, certifying that it has received a specified sum of money on deposit).
The Coin Obverses section discusses why mostly the reverses of the Spanish coins were used on American notes. Possible reasons include: the general dislike for royalty shared by many Americans. Royal images were the main design elements of the obverse of most Spanish coins; most included the king’s portrait and name. The obverse also usually had the date of mintage which was much earlier than many of the notes’ dates of issue. This date discrepancy could call into question the note’s value. Other possible reasons include the fact that the coin obverses changed whenever there was a new king, and the coins had their denomination on the reverse.
The Denominations page discusses the link between the Spanish 8 reales and our own silver dollar, and features a listing of the most common combinations of Spanish coin vignettes and U.S. obsolete notes. The combinations include:
- ½ real coin on 5 cent notes
- 1 real coin on 10 cent notes
- 2 reales coins on 25 cent notes
- 4 reales coin on 50 cent notes
- 8 reales coin on dollar or multiple dollars notes.
Counterfeit, raised, and spurious notes are among those discussed in the Fraudulent Notes section of the site. Counterfeit notes are unauthorized copies of genuine notes, meant to defraud or fool the public. Raised notes are genuine notes that had the denomination changed to one higher than that of the issue. Spurious notes are notes that do not actually copy another genuine note, although they have similarities to the actual issue.
Some of the known error notes in this series are also covered on the site. Descriptions of a double denomination note, an inverted coin note, and a mirror image coin note are included. An image of the double denomination note is available on the site, references are given for pictures of the other error notes for the adventurous.
In summary, this website provides an informative sample of the world of collecting obsolete bank notes that feature vignettes of Spanish coins. If you fail to remember the website address, here’s a tip: remember "Bob Schreiner" (the author of this website), and "Spanish coins on American notes" (the subject of the site). Enter these keywords into an internet search engine, and you should find Bob’s site at or near the top of the listing!
ã Copyright Raleigh Coin Club - 1997, 1998, 1999,2000,2001,2002
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