Colonial Currency Exhibit

November 7, 2006 6:49 PM

An online gallery of Colonial American Currency. You can browse by colony. They also have images of early lottery tickets. Plus brief and informative essays on subjects such as The Value of Money in Colonial America. You can also relive the Copper Panic of 1789-1799.
posted by marxchivist (7 comments total)

Nice find, and good timing. Sic semper tyrannis!
posted by owhydididoit at 8:01 PM on November 7, 2006

What's the relationship between currency and waitency?
posted by nervousfritz at 10:58 PM on November 7, 2006

Neat. I always love scans of letterpress printing. The oldest examples from Pennsylvania were printed by Benjamin Franklin. "To Counterfeit is DEATH." (Set in Baskerville's italic.)
posted by D.C. at 1:09 AM on November 8, 2006

And like confederate currency, worth more than what we currently have in our wallets. To be utterly crass about it.

Good stuff.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:16 AM on November 8, 2006

Hey, 1790 isn't colonial! This sucks!

I mean... This is fantastic! What a great site. Check this out: the first public paper money issued in the history of Western civilization! (Read all about it here: it happened because Massachusetts sent a bunch of men off to conquer Canada expecting to pay them from the booty, never imagining they might get defeated and still have to be paid.)
posted by languagehat at 6:06 AM on November 8, 2006

I had no idea there were colonial lotteries; that just blew my mind. Great post, Marxchivist, thank you for sharing!
posted by headspace at 7:18 AM on November 8, 2006

Canada has a fascinating Currency Museum. I learned about playing card money there, milk tokens, the first paper money, and got to see examples of the Euro.

There was also a section dealing with counterfeit US bank notes being passed in Canada, and the government having to buy them out to prevent a currency fall (unfortunately, I'm not finding anything online on this).

I highly recommend it to anyone in Ottawa.
posted by QIbHom at 12:10 PM on November 9, 2006