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40 Dollars 'Continental Currency' - United States
| Issuer | Continental Congress of the United States |
|---|---|
| Year | 1778 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 40 Dollars |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette enclosed within a decorative typographic border presents a radiant eye above an altar encircled by thirteen stars, symbolising the union of the original colonies, with the motto CONFEDERATION on a banner within the circular frame. The denomination XL DOLLARS appears in letterpress at lower right, accompanied by the statutory redemption text entitling the bearer to forty Spanish milled dollars in gold or silver pursuant to the Congressional resolution of 26 September 1778. The entire composition is executed in the colonial letterpress tradition characteristic of Continental Currency issues authorised by the Continental Congress. |
|---|---|
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| Protection description | Botanical nature print on reverse produced by pressing an actual plant specimen onto the printing plate, creating a unique and nearly impossible to counterfeit impression — an anti-forgery method pioneered by Benjamin Franklin and standard on Continental Currency issues. |
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| Comments |
Continental Currency was printed under Congressional authorization and backed by nothing more concrete than a promise of future tax redemption by the individual states — a mechanism that failed almost immediately. By 1778, the year of this issue, massive over-emission had already begun eroding public confidence, and the phrase "not worth a Continental" was entering common use. The forty-dollar denomination was one of the higher face values in circulation, which made it both a target for the British counterfeiting campaign and a denomination ordinary colonists rarely handled at face value.
Hall and Sellers, the Philadelphia printing firm of Benjamin Franklin's old Pennsylvania Gazette, used nature-printed leaf impressions as the primary anti-counterfeiting device — a technique Franklin himself had championed decades earlier. The British, flooding the colonies with forged notes to destabilize the war economy, found the botanical prints genuinely difficult to replicate convincingly.