3 Dollars - Marine Bank of Chicago Replica

The American Bank Note Company issued a series of facsimile notes in 1991 drawing on its own archival plate holdings — a commercially motivated project, but one with genuine documentary value. ABNCo had engraved currency and security documents for American banks throughout the nineteenth century and retained many of the original dies and records long after those institutions had collapsed or been absorbed. The Marine Bank of Chicago is among the more historically pointed choices: the bank failed in 1861 when its president, John B. Lyon, absconded with its assets.

These replicas were not legal tender and carried appropriate overprinting to that effect. The 1991 series was among ABNCo's last major commercial projects before the company's financial difficulties culminated in its 1999 bankruptcy.