The following is an excerpt from Keep the Change by Harley J. Spiller, collector of unique American dollars and cents. Here, he shows off a few bills from his collection.
BEN FRANKLIN
Why is US money green? No one knows for sure, but the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has some pretty good guesses. In general, the bureau tells us, green pigment is readily available in large quantities; is relatively higher in resistance than other colors to chemical and physical changes like fading, flaking, and discoloration; and is psychologically identified with strength and stability. The particular green of US money originated around the same time as photography in the mid-1800s, when an increase in the fraudulent erasing and reprinting of bills with higher denominations called for special colored inks that could not be cleanly removed. One such ink, a green, earned a copyright — and star status as the main color of US currency. The innovative hue, still the primary color used on US bills, is known as “patent green.”
Maybe the choice of green also relates to Benjamin Franklin’s turn to nature for motifs that would help stem the counterfeiting that was rampant during the eighteenth century. Starting in 1739, Franklin printed banknotes with images of blackberry, willow, and other leaves that displayed complex shapes, unevenly serrated edges, and subtly gradated vein systems. Franklin’s banknotes bore the frightful inscription: “To Counterfeit is DEATH”; when that did not deter criminals, careful comparisons of the leaf prints’ singular shapes could uncover their deceptions. Franklin’s leaf-print method was ingenious, but if it were truly as counterfeit-proof as the great inventor believed, we would not need the more colorful currency technologies in use today.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
Once I spotted a cozy-looking four-dollar pair of corduroys at the thrift store, so I tried them on, shoved my hand in a pocket, and struck a pose. “Eww,” I thought, as I pulled out a square of cloth the same mossy green as the pants, “someone left his hankie.” Into the wastepaper basket it went, but as it fluttered down, it unfolded, and Alexander Hamilton peered up through the murk. I snatched back the barely recognizable ten-dollar bill, paid for the pants, and pocketed the profit. My next thought — “Free lunch!” — was derailed when I realized if I spent the sawbuck, I’d never see another like it. This all took place a couple of decades ago, but I still remember checking the pockets one last time before giving the worn-out wide wales back to the thrift store where I scored this extragreen green.
I’m not the first to make note of stained banknotes. J. H. Griffith wrote on the topic in 1877 in Money As It Was and Is, spelling out the rules for exchanging worn money and cataloging the ways banknotes could become mutilated through accidental contact with industrial oil, paint, and acid processes. These produced, he wrote, “strange results; instead of greenbacks, they are sometimes blackbacks, or partly or entirely blue, red or yellow — in fact all the colors which dyes can make them.”
TREY JUROR
People stain bills with differing degrees of intentionality. Sometimes bills get stained by accident (next time you buy a pint of wild berries from a forager, check the color of your change). {third row, second column} Sometimes people doing dirty jobs don’t have rags at hand and grab at anything absorbent. I don’t know how most of the bills in my collection got their added colors, but I can explain the yellow one shown in the fourth row, second column of the picture above. In 1973 artist Paul McMahon was working in a gas station, making change all day, when he was struck by a funny idea: “What if people gave me regular money, and I gave them colored money as change?” He got some dye, stained fifteen bucks or so in the three primary colors, and had so much fun he still makes new editions from time to time. The one I have is countersigned with a classic McMahon pun, directly over the engraved signature of Henry M. Paulson Jr.: “Trey Juror.”
Keep the Change: A Collector’s Tales of Lucky Pennies, Counterfeit C-Notes, and Other Curious Currency by Harley J. Spiller is available from:
Harley J. Spiller, a.k.a. Inspector Collector, is a professional museum educator who presents his international collections to inspire the lifelong love of learning. He holds the Guinness World Record for world’s largest collection of restaurant menus and is cited by Arts & Antiques as one of the nation’s “Top 100 Collectors.”
