The Civil War is one of the most fertile fields in many areas of human endeavor. Numismatics is especially heavily affected, and there are a great many aspects of the war that can occupy full-time collecting efforts. By 1862, with specie (hard money) payments suspended, economic chaos had taken hold and many people started hoarding small change for its bullion value. These notes were printed due to this hoarding of metallic coins leading into the civil war. People were paying a premium for hard coinage and a lot of our coinage was being shipped to Canada due to speculation. This left a large gap in circulating coins and performing even the most elementary business transactions grew extremely difficult. To fill this gap, merchants started issuing all sorts of things to make change. They issued credit script, used candy or even there own types of advertising mediums to make change for less than a dollar. Postage stamps were often traded as you would use spare change today. The government finally stepped in and on July 17, 1862 then president Lincoln signed into law the use of Postage and "other" stamps that would be authorized for circulation as lawful money, but the sticky stamps just did not work out.

Treasury Secretary Francis Ellis Spinner attached five stamps to a small piece of paper and fractional currency was born. He called his new small notes "Postage Currency", even going so far as to perforate some of the original issues. There were five different issues released during the life span of the currency. These were originally printed by American Bank Note Co. and then by our treasury.
With five different issues of notes released over the period of 1862 to 1876, it is very easy to start either a type note or issue related collection.
They were printed from 1863 to 1876.From 1862 to 1876, the Treasury issued 24 different design types of Fractional Currency in denominations of 3, 5, 10, 15, 25, and 50 cents. While individual Fr. numbers of many of these types vary in rarity from common to extremely rare, none of the 24 different design types as a whole are rare even in high grades. Since most of these Fractional types are readily available and therefore affordable to most collectors, a complete set is an easily attainable goal.

 I hope you have enjoyed this compact lesson on fractional currency and maybe try a few notes and enjoy the rewards they provide.

Robert
Legend's Coin Co.