Cash Original
Fun Collectible: Confederate Bonds
You have probably seen some Confederate currency, whether the genuine specimen on display somewhere, or a reproduction like those for sale in gift stores near Civil War battlefields. Now then, have you ever seen a Confederate bond?
The Richmond government emitted bonds to get funding for its war effort. Southerners and others advanced money to the government, which in return promised to repay them, with a stated amount of interest, presumably after the war was won and the CSA secure.
The end of the conflict, and the defeat of the Confederate States, guaranteed that the lenders never collected on what they were owed. The bonds themselves disappeared into boxes and closets.
Today, though, those bond certificates are prized collector’s items. And, you can turn around and sell Confederate bonds (and other paper collectibles) in the online auction market for a pretty decent return.
Confederate bonds are just the thing for lending both an historic and a decorative air to a room. For this purpose, almost any of the ones you can come across on the market will do the job nicely. However, if you are wanting to buy in order to later for a profit, you need to study up on the different bond issues, and also such indispensable things as grading for condition.
The CSA government promulgated a fairly large number of bond issues throughout the course of the life of the secessionist nation. For every issue, various “denominations” (referring to the certificate’s face value) were distributed. These all had a variety of differing decorations, and sometimes even different pape colors, to distinguish them from one another.
During an era when ornamentation was the norm, these Confederate bonds were perfrect examples of embellishment. In addition to having the terms of the bond printed in cursive, they often contained art of rural and urban scenes as well as people, both real and mythological.
On my wall in the room where I am writing this, I have a $1,000 face-value CSA bond that I purchased at a coin show and had framed a while back. It is gorgeous, bearing words printed in elaborate italic script and, most prominently, a vignette of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. You probably know that he languished and then died in the confusion of war, having been shot by a southern soldier during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Being one of the South’s greatest heroes, therefore it was predictable that his likeness should come to grace the Confederacy’s bonds.
Many Confederate bonds were actually sold to people in Europe, particularly in Britain, not to the desperately downtrodden inhabitants of the Confederacy. My Stonewall Jackson bond came from a hoard uncovered in England in modern times. These sorts of finds come to light every now and then, driving prices down in the paper collectibles marketplace, but the dip is usually short lived. Of late word come that Stonewall Jacksons are now difficult to get hold of, so I’m very grateful that I was able to get one at the time I did.
If your interest in Confederate bonds perhaps goes beyond merely holding on to and admiring their peculiar beauty and historic legacy, you will discover them to be a wonderful entre into scripophily. This is the hobby of collecting old financial certificates, which often includes bank instruments, stock certificates, railroad bonds and more.
If you wish to delve into this subject in more depth, you can find books, as well as lots of information on the Web pertaining to CSA bonds. You should learn more about their historical background and then attend coin shows where dealers often have them for sale. If you’re just interested in the art aspect, you can buy one or two of the more common issues relatively inexpensively. If you are interested in trading for profit or as a business, of course you will need to learn much more about these bonds, their various issues and how to evaluate their condition, and be prepared for the give-and-take of haggling with other dealers.
Leave it to an enterprising British woman to become the world’s authority on making money–even earning a living–selling pieces of American paper, not only old money and bonds but even pages torn out from old magazines. You can discover more about her surprising eBay paper selling method here.
Johnny Cash Hurt
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