20 Dollars

Hoyer & Ludwig were lithographers, not engravers — a distinction that matters here. The Confederate Treasury turned to local Richmond trade printers in 1861 out of pure necessity, since the established security printers in the North were obviously unavailable. Lithography produced softer, less precise imagery than the intaglio work on contemporary Federal notes, and the results were notoriously easy to counterfeit. The Confederate government was aware of this almost immediately.

Pick 30 is one of several Hoyer & Ludwig issues from the first year of Confederate currency, before the Treasury moved toward more standardized production. Cotton paper was sourced domestically, but supply was inconsistent across the run, and paper quality varies measurably between surviving examples.