New additions week 52 - 2013

Just before the end of the year I received a new addition to my collection: a 1 dollar Silver Certificate from the United States (series 1935-E, P416D2e).

Silver Certificates are a type of representative money printed from 1878 to 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard. The certificates were initially redeemable in the same face value of silver dollar coins, and later in raw silver bullion. Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but are still valid legal tender.

Normally I'm not much of a collector of US notes. Mainly because I think they have boring designs and also because a lot of the collectors of US notes I know are obsessed with special serial numbers. For me that's not the collecting of banknotes but of numbers on an arbitrary item. This Silver Certificate however has an interesting numismatic story so I welcome it in my collection.