16 Shillings Colony of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's 1773 emission was authorized by a provincial assembly that had been fighting the British Board of Trade for decades over the right to issue paper currency — a fight the Currency Act of 1764 had largely settled against the colonies. The 16 shilling denomination is an odd one, chosen to facilitate specific exchange transactions rather than round-sum accounting, a practical colonial habit that strikes modern collectors as arbitrary.

Hall and Sellers printed the series at their Philadelphia shop using the nature-printed leaf borders developed by Benjamin Franklin — a counterfeit deterrent Franklin had pioneered decades earlier and sold to the firm.