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25 Cents The Store at Alleghany Furnace
| Issuer | The Store at Alleghany Furnace |
|---|---|
| Year | 1856 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Dollar |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | TWENTY-FIVE CENTS The Store at Alleghany Furnace, Will pay to Bearer, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS on demand, in Dry Goods & Groceries. Jan. 1st, 1856 |
| Reverse description | The reverse is an uninked show-through impression of the obverse design, appearing as a mirror image of the vignette, text, and border elements, consistent with a single-sided letterpress printing on thin paper stock with no intentional reverse design. |
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| Comments |
Alleghany Furnace was an iron-making operation in Virginia's Alleghany County, and like most antebellum ironworks, it ran a company store that effectively controlled the economic lives of its workers. Scrip of this kind — issued in fractional denominations to handle small transactions — was not currency in any legal sense. It was a closed-loop credit instrument redeemable only at the issuing store, binding workers to spend their wages where their employer could profit twice.
Fractional paper scrip from individual ironworks furnaces is genuinely uncommon in any condition. Paper this thin rarely survived a Virginia summer, let alone 170 years.