Talk:Silver certificate (United States)

Silver Certificates, not FRNs!
I appreciate the enthusiasm of 129.137.181.252, but this article about Silver Certificates only! The Federal Reserve Notes are endorsed by the U.S. Government, otherwise there wouldn't be a department devoted to printing them. The section you added is more appropriate for the Federal Reserve Note article because your addition doesn't deal with Silver Certificates. Even if Federal Reserve Notes can be backed by silver in the future, they are still FRNs.

"Silver Certificates were abolished by Congress on June 4, 1963 and all redemption in silver ceased on June 24, 1968. Thus, the United States no longer has a paper currency that is legal tender for the purchase of goods & services, as any vendor may refuse to accept Federal Reserve Notes as officially stated at: http://www.treasury.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.html#q1 However, the Federal Reserve Act has a poison pill provision which requires all said Notes to be redeemed in silver if Congress ever decides to abolish it. At such time a $1 Note should have the market value of one ounce of silver. In the meantime, the market has discounted such a possibility by valuing a $1 Note to be the amount of silver that it will buy as the inverse of the current spot price per ounce."

By the way, could someone please post a link to the "poison pill" clause of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913?

If no one replies to this post by December 31, 2005, this section will be deleted. If you are the author of the questioned section, please write on this page your reasoning behind the addition.

-rcnj Numismatic Article Writer

Edited To Add (10-20-2005): It already appears someone has taken the initiative in removing this material.

Poison pill clause
In addition to the lack of citation, this paragraph makes assertions unlikely on their face. Since a silver dollar was not one ounce fine at the time of passage of the Act, I cannot believe that redemption ounce-for-dollar would be provided for. This whole section looks OR and doubtful. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:18, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The US mint quotes the Law of 1792 as defining a dollar as "three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver". An ounce Troy Avoirdupois is 437.5 grains, and therefore this may be either a rounding by the source, or a 5% premium, which is not prohibitive.


 * I note with some amusement that the Eagle is defined as "EAGLES--each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain two hundred and forty-seven grains and four eighths of a grain of pure, or two hundred and seventy grains of standard gold." This is 15.4:1.


 * Crime of 1873 does not belong in the intro under that name; even in scare quotes, that's not neutral phrasing. Septentrionalis 20:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * But the 1792 act was not in force when the Fed was established. The Morgan and Peace dollars were the current circulating dollars at the time, at 338.38 grains fine, which is considerably less than an ounce. Robert A.West (Talk) 08:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Source? This site says 412.5 grains of .900 silver, which would be 371.25 grains fine. But I have made (and now correct) a far more serious error, which leads me to agree in doubting this; the odds that any currency act would involved avoirdupois ounces of silver is wanishingly small. Septentrionalis 18:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I've removed it again: with tags, it was


 * ''However, the Federal Reserve Act has a poison pill provision which requires all said Notes to be redeemed in silver if Congress ever decides to abolish it (subject to Congress amending that provision). At such time a $1 note should have the market value of one ounce of silver. In the meantime, the market has discounted such a possibility by valuing a $1 note to be the amount of silver that it will buy as the inverse of the current spot price per ounce.

Sources for any of this are welcome. Septentrionalis 00:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Clarify: Payment of a debt versus purchase of goods and services
Various unsourced edits have been reverted, including edits that resulted in the following erroneous passage:


 * Thus, U.S. Federal Reserve Notes are not a paper currency that is legal tender for the purchase of goods and services, as any vendor may refuse to accept them, according to the U.S. Treasury. Thus, U.S. Federal Reserve Notes are not legally backed by the goods and services of the U.S. economy.

Some of these statements are true and some are false; overall, the material does not follow logically from the material provided.

The statement that "U.S. Federal Reserve Notes are not legally backed by the goods and services of the U.S. economy," whether correct or not, has little to do with whether the Notes are a paper currency that is "legal tender for the purchase of goods and services." Likewise, the fact that a vendor may refuse to accept the Notes for the purchase of goods and services does not mean that the Notes are not legal tender for payment of debts.

The phrase "paper currency that is legal tender" relates to satisfaction (payment) of debts (pre-existing obligations), not purchase of goods and services (which instead involve contemporaneous exchanges). Yes, any vendor may refuse to accept cash in payment of goods and services, as documented in the link to the Treasury department web site. A payment of goods and services in this context means a contemporaneous exchange, such as buying a hamburger at McDonald's. This is not a "payment of a debt" for purposes of the term "legal tender."

By contrast, if you owe McDonald's ten thousand dollars for a bunch of hamburgers you bought at McDonald's "on credit" a long time ago, then a tender of Federal Reserve notes in payment of that pre-existing debt would be a legal tender, and McDonald's would probably have no realistic choice but to accept the cash.

In short, the "source" provided -- the Treasury web site -- is not really a valid source for the claim that was being made in the article. Yours, Famspear 23:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Explain William Windom and "$2 silver certificate"
Will somebody please explain this image, and the claims about it at William Windom. There is absolutely nothing about it in this article. Is this just a hoax somebody has foisted upon us? Gene Nygaard (talk) 17:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

If JFK signed EO 11110 for the US Treasury Dept. to print $4.29 Billion in Silver Certificates on June 4, 1963($2 and $5 notes), how can it also be abolished on the same date by congress? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11110 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.236.164.192 (talk) 19:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

1935A blue seal W.A. Julian - Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
interested in finding the value of the $1 silver certificate 1935 a series with a blue seal circulated —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.149.176.226 (talk) 15:36, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * How much value is the dollar bill 2600:1012:B109:43F6:FD2D:5EEF:3612:6F85 (talk) 02:47, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Star Notes
Why does the explanation given in this article for the "star note" differ entirely from the information given in the Star Note article? -- lowgenius  --   My Talk Page 04:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm guessing it's because the person who edited it doesn't really know what a star note signifies. I'm just going to take that sentence out. It doesn't really add anything to the article, and as the article changes, it's no longer going to "line up" with the image, anyway. Almostfm (talk) 14:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Kennedy and EO 11110
Unless someone's got a good reason not to, I'm going to tweak the sentence about 11110 "authorizing the Treasury" to issue new silver certs. That's really not what it did--11110 just delegated the existing authority from the President to the Treasury Secretary. My hunch is that the intent of including the sentence was to imply that this was some new authority, which is wasn't. Almostfm (talk) 10:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

OK--after a year and a half (I forgot to make the change I suggested), I've modified the section.Almostfm (talk) 07:19, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Image substitution
I substituted two higher resolution images for existing images. Please let me know if this is a problem. Thanks--Godot13 (talk) 06:50, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Conversion to list?
I wondered if there would be any objection to converting this article into a list-class article (with the express intent of nominating it for FLC) that would feature a table with a complete type set of large (minus two notes represented by BEP proofs) and small size silver certificates (all 800dpi).-Godot13 (talk) 19:05, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Just double-checking to make sure there's no objection/discussion needed before I start working offline to develop this.-Godot13 (talk) 05:59, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Conversion underway - lead restructured, some re-written, refs added. Tables with typeset added. Working on last sections (small size and end of certs).--Godot13 (talk) 23:04, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Conversion complete. Just tweaking now.-Godot13 (talk) 01:33, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Title change
If there is no objection, I am going to change the title of the article to "Silver Certificate (United States)". Both the Republic of Hawaii and the Philippines issued a silver certificate and future articles may need the disambiguation.-Godot13 (talk) 04:54, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I have moved the article back to Silver certificate because there is no need to disambiguate the article until other articles with the same title are created; such articles might never be created. If such articles are created, I have no objections to the article title being disambiguated again, but the "C" in "certificate" should be lowercase, to be consistent with the usage in the article text. Neelix (talk) 16:39, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Neelix- These are the kinds of things that should be discussed on a talk page prior to execution. Doing so would have revealed that Silver certificate (Cuba) is nearly ready to be moved to article space. Could you please undo the move you have just done? Thanks.--Godot13 (talk) 17:59, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I would certainly be glad to do so once the Cuba article goes live. Thank you for letting me know about it. Neelix (talk) 18:02, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Neelix - the article is live at Silver certificate (Cuba).--Godot13 (talk) 04:01, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Small-size silver certificates
I'm not completely happy with part of this section, but I'm not quite sure how to word it.

The section "In some cases printing plates were used until they wore out, even though newer ones were also producing notes, so the sequencing of signatures may not always be chronological. Thus some of the 1935 dated dollar bills were released as late as 1963" is not technically accurate. The Series 1957 notes were the first to be printed on presses that could handle 32-subject plates. However, there weren't enough of the presses in place to handle $1 bill production, so they continued to use some of the 18 subject presses for the Series 1935 notes. By the time the Series 1963 notes were printed, there were enough to handle $1 production. The 18 subject presses continued to be used for higher denominations until the last one was replaced in 1968, so there were Series 1950 bills of $5-$100 in production along with Series 1963 bills on the new pressesAlmostfm (talk) 03:29, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Later addition to the list. If you would like to rework that part, you are more than welcome. I'm happy to help. Thanks--Godot13 (talk) 03:40, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, howzabout something like this: In 1957, the BEP began to install new presses capable of printing 32 notes on a sheet, and these were used to produce Series 1957 notes.  Because there weren't enough of the new presses for production of all $1 silver certificates, the older 18 subject presses continued to be used until 1963 to print Series 1935 bills.Almostfm (talk) 04:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I may tweak it (just a little) after it goes in. Do you have a reference source to cite? If not, give me a few days and I'll find one...-Godot13 (talk) 05:03, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Courtesan Note
I've just come across a newly created article about one Helen Josephine Mansfield, which says (with a reference) that the 1891 U.S. $1,000 silver certificate, known as the Courtesan Note, depicts the image of a woman that was based on a photograph of her. However, this is not mentioned in this article. I don't feel comfortable fixing it myself, as I know almost nothing about either coinage or Ms. Mansfield. While trying to find more information about this, I came across this article on Wikicoins, which may or may not be useful. Graham 87 02:58, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll do some research on this. The 1891 $1,000 note has never (within numismatics) widely been called the Courtesan Note. It has always colloquially been referred to as the Marcy note.--Godot13 (talk) 09:48, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

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