Some facts about $1 Silver Certs "Black Eagles" you will want to know!

Good Sunday evening folks!
I thought with the recent posting of an all time favorite note, The $1 Silver Certificate "Black Eagle" Series of 1899 that you might enjoy a little information on this note as far as the varieties available to you and what to look for with those varieties.

The key here is the Series information, there are 3 forms of notes with the Series of 1899 located in 3 different places on the note. The images attached will illistrate this as well.

First off Fr# 226 Lyons/Roberts is the only Fr# with the Series information printed above the SN# on the right hand side of the note!

Second, Fr# 226a, 227, 228 and 229 (Lyons-Roberts, Lyons-Treat, Vernon-Treat, Vernon-McClung) have the Series information below the SN# on the right side of the note!

Third (3rd) Fr# 229 thru #236 (Vernon-McClung, Napier-McClung, Napier-Thompson, Parker-Burke, Tehee-Burke, Elliott-Burke, Elliott-White and Speelman-White...yes Fr# 229 has both below and vertical listings) have the Series information in a vertical position on the right inside edge of the note like the one's Urban and I have in our collections. It was engraved by G.F.C. Smillie, however, Lincolns Image was based on a photograph taken by Anthony Berger


Since a lot of folks like these notes, me included, I thought I might as well submit this Thread for your reading pleasure! :smile

Enjoy!!

RB

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Small correction. Fr# 230 through 236 have the series in a vertical position on the right. Those map to CH 46 to 52 in my guide so you probably just looked at the wrong column. The Vernon-McClung signature combo (Fr. 229 if the series is below the SN) also has a variety with the signature vertical and on the right and it is the rarest note (or at least the most expensive) of the series.

 

The Fr# should read CH# 45-52 in the 3rd Listing, The info I have is the same...I listed the CH #'s for the Fr #'s by mistake.

Thanks..


****Edited orig post****
RB

 

So far i have 2 out of 3 lol i dont yet have the Series above type. when i bought the 3 i have, i thought i had gotten it right it bought 1 of each type. i guess i just got confused at some point well, that just leaves 1 more note i do need to buy lol

Thanks for the nice background RickieB!!

 

Nice info RickieB, I have the third type! I never knew about the varieties!

 

More specifically, the first 100,000,000 notes printed used this configuration. These are the "plain" block notes, with no letters at all in the serial number. The date-below-serial configuration began to be used at the start of the second block, with "A" serial numbers.

Incidentally, if you enjoy varieties, you can collect the four different serial formats that exist in this series:

1. the "plain" block, without letters.
2. the single-letter blocks, with a prefix letter but no suffix letter.
3. the double-letter blocks, with matching prefix and suffix letters.
4. the "A"-suffix blocks, with suffix "A" and nonmatching prefix letter.

It's an interesting sequence, showing how the BEP had to keep coming up with new block patterns to keep printing more and more notes over the twenty-odd years that this series was in production. (If you like, you can throw in a star note too; they're all *..B block in this series, no matter which of the above serial formats they were printed to replace.)

 

Great info. Read your post on the 1917 $2 thread and that led me to your serial number table for this series...
http://www.uspapermoney.info/serials/s1899_s.html

...quick question and this may be in one of my books, but just to save me the time...why is this CA block skipped on most of the large size notes?!? F & G seem to be missing as well.

 

The large-size block alphabet is...strange. I've never seen an explanation of how they decided which letters to include and which to skip. Indeed, they weren't even consistent themselves over time. The approximately "standard" alphabet was

A B D E H K M N R T V X Y Z

but there were variations--those Black Eagles have a U..U block, even though earlier they didn't use a U block, and later they didn't use a U..A block.

Some of the Nationals, which I still don't have on the website, are even odder; they occasionally skipped a letter like M or T and then tacked it on at the end after the Z block. The 1882 gold certificates *did* use a C block, but skipped B instead for no apparent reason.

The earliest notes with block letters apparently chose them entirely at random (perhaps to confuse counterfeiters?). The 1869 $1's have five serial blocks, which in order are B, Z, V, K, and A. Other denominations used unrelated sequences. Maybe later when the BEP decided to start proceeding in alphabetical order, they just alphabetized the letters they already had without bothering to go out and get the letters they'd never used before? No, that doesn't work either; the 1869 $100's are all W block, which doesn't seem to have been used ever again on large-size notes.

When the FRNs came along in 1914, every letter from A to L came into use as a prefix, but even then the suffixes were still pulled from the shortened alphabet: the New York $5's rolled over from B..B to B..D, with no B..C block.

The small-size notes, beginning with Series 1928, introduced the 25-letter alphabet using every letter except O. That was standard until the '60s when everything but FRNs went out of production; at that point, the BEP seems to have discarded its supply of letters above L. At least, the 1977A $1's on New York had to roll over from B..L back to B..A, since there apparently weren't any M's available any more. And in the 1985 $1's, there's a several-month production gap between the end of the L blocks and the start of the M blocks; this looks suspiciously like the BEP had to go put in an order for some new letters! Since then, several series have gone past the L suffix without apparent incident--but the new alphabet appears to end at Y, not Z, since the 1995 $1's hit the end of the Y block in the two largest districts, and then shifted production to other districts for the year-plus remainder of the series.

As always, more than you wanted to know....

 

thanks!!

 

numbers, as always, you provide fascinating facts

many thanks!

 

Numbers,

Perhaps you may be able to shed some light on this subject. I have looked and searched and looked again with no luck!
You mention collecting by Block and Serial # format. The first one you mention "plain" block there are symbols used to stop the SN# sequence, I have many Large Size notes that display many different symbols and I have searched for the proper names, indentification, print tags whatever you want to call them. ALl I have ever found was that the symbols were used to stop the SN# progression.
Any additional info on those would be impressive to say the least!

SGN

 

Because the numbering started at 1, not 00000001 like they do now. They did not use leading zeroes. There are 1 digit serials, 2 digit, 3 digit, etc.

 

Thanks for bumping up this old thread. I have not seen it before and it's very informative!

 

+1

 

The black eagle is a very cool but common note good examples can be had for just
a few bucks

 

Wellllll, I just did a quick scan of eBay completed sales and there's really nothing under $50 that's not damaged or extremely worn out.

 

What's the method of doing that? I see everyone saying they use it as a benchmark but I've scanned the bay and can't seem to find that section

 

Do a search for what you're interested in, then scroll down. Near the bottom of the left column, under "Show only," click on the box marked "Sold listings."

 

i say a few bucks under $100 and that,s a reasonable price of course your going to get something in the VF or circulated range and that,s still a good example.

 

I want one for my book. I'm thinking about trading a ChCU 35A N African emergency $1, ChCU 53*,53A* and 53B $5 for a nice black eagle*.