50 Cents State of North Carolina

North Carolina's reliance on J.T. Patterson & Co. in Augusta reflects the Confederacy's increasingly desperate printing geography by 1863 — with Richmond under pressure and resources fractured across state lines, several Confederate states contracted with Georgia-based printers to maintain their fractional currency programs. Patterson handled a substantial volume of Southern state and Confederate issues during this period, and quality consistency across the run is uneven.

The Criswell CS#137 designation places this within the state's smaller fractional emissions, which circulated heavily at the local retail level as coin effectively vanished from everyday commerce. Genuine circulation wear on these notes is the rule, not the exception.