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5 Dollars 'Continental Currency' - United States
| Issuer | Continental Congress of the United States |
|---|---|
| Year | 1778 |
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| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Central vignette within a double-ruled circular border presents a hand grasping a thorned bramble plant, blood issuing from the wound, rendered in letterpress engraving — a classical emblem of stoic endurance. The Latin motto SUSTINE · VEL · ABSTINE ("Bear or Forbear") encircles the vignette within the roundel. The right-hand field carries the redemption text in italic script, while ornate typographic border work frames all four sides of the note, with the denomination FIVE DOLLARS repeated at upper and lower left. |
|---|---|
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| Protection description | Nature-printed leaf vignette on the reverse, produced by pressing actual leaves against the printing plate to create a unique impression resistant to counterfeiting. |
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| Comments |
Hall and Sellers printed Continental Currency throughout the war using a technique Benjamin Franklin had pioneered decades earlier — pressing actual leaves against the plate to create a nature-print border that was, at the time, essentially impossible to counterfeit convincingly. The British tried anyway. Tory-operated presses in New York produced forged Continentals in bulk, a deliberate campaign to destabilize colonial finance by flooding the market with bad paper.
By 1778, the damage was already severe. Congress had been printing aggressively since 1775, and combined with British counterfeiting, purchasing power had collapsed to the point where "not worth a Continental" was entering common speech. This note circulated into that environment.