5 Dollars Silver Certificate, Blue Seal at right

By 1953, Silver Certificates were already obsolete in function — the Treasury had no intention of honoring them with actual silver coin at the teller window, and the fiction was formally ended in 1964 when redemption rights were suspended entirely. Congress finally terminated silver dollar backing for this series in 1963, stripping whatever residual meaning the "payable in silver" obligation still carried.

The 1953B signature pairing of Smith and Dillon is the scarcest of the three runs in this series, produced in significantly smaller quantities before the entire Silver Certificate program was wound down in favor of Federal Reserve Notes.