2 Dollars

The Peoples Bank of New Brunswick was chartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and this 1874 note comes from a period when hundreds of state-chartered and private banks still issued their own currency alongside the federally issued National Bank notes that had been expanding since 1863. The co-existence was uneasy — National Bank notes were backed by U.S. government bonds, while notes like this one depended entirely on the issuing bank's solvency. Many such institutions failed during or shortly after the Panic of 1873, making survival of circulated examples from this immediate post-panic window genuinely uncommon.

ABNC's engraved work from this period is consistently tight, the cotton substrate holding ink with very little lateral bleed.