Bernie wrote:
I think that it is a little dangerous to use the HA archives for this purpose since the distribution of surviving notes (and subsequently auctioned by HA) does not have to resemble the distribution of issued notes.
I quite agree, but at the moment I don't have many other data sources. One thing to bear in mind, unless we can get actual production numbers for the notes from a definitive source as well as the destruction numbers from the redemptions processes, the anecdotal information of sources like Heritage go as far as any other data source to indicate the availability of specific notes or denominations.
Bernie wrote:
Since I have already gone through about 30% of Haxby, I might just do the rest, unless of course you are interested in helping.
I'd love to be able to help, but I don't own a set of Haxby volumes yet. I'm hard pressed to spend a grand on books, and wish that Krause would either reprint them and sell the sets again, sell the rights to another printer, or release them into the public domain.
Bernie wrote:
Would Great Britain have taken this paper bond or more likely required hard currency?
Everything I've read about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War indicates that the reason we had hard (metallic) currency shortages here in the states is because we used the metallic money to pay foreign companies and governments for war supplies. Now certainly is is a gross over-simplification, but it shows the preference the foreign entities had for "real" money, though I'm sure they took their fair share of promissory notes too.
- Greg