20 Dollars

Hoyer & Ludwig were a Richmond lithography firm with no prior experience printing currency — the Confederacy turned to them out of desperation in 1861, when established banknote engravers in the North were no longer available. The results were predictably crude by contemporary standards: lithographic reproduction rather than intaglio engraving, which made these notes far easier to counterfeit than anything issued by the U.S. Treasury in Washington.

Pick 10 belongs to the first wave of Confederate emission, authorized under the Act of March 9, 1861. Notes were hand-signed by appointed clerks — sometimes dozens of different signers across a single series — and serial numbers written in by hand.