20 Dollars Gold Certificate

Gold Certificates of this series were not general circulation notes in the usual sense — they were technically receipts for gold coin deposited with the Treasury, redeemable on demand. In practice, banks used them heavily for interbank settlements, which means surviving examples tend to show hard use. The 1906 series introduced a revised large-size format and updated Treasury signatures across multiple denominations as administrations turned over.

Parker served as Register of the Treasury and Burke as Treasurer — the signature pairing places this note in a specific window of the Taft administration. Gold Certificates were pulled from public circulation by executive order in 1933 and their private ownership made illegal; most were surrendered and destroyed. Survivors exist largely because of collectors who risked non-compliance, or notes that were overseas when the order took effect.