T-36 PF-4 1861 Confederate Paper Money - Red Round Trans-Mississippi stamp!

Description

T-36 PF-4. 1861 .00 CSA Currency.
Sailor to the left. Commerce seated on a bale of cotton in the center. Issued from March 31, 1862 through January 3, 1863.
J.T. Paterson & Co. Columbia S.C. lower right.
Serial number 134491. Plen 9A. Red Round February Trans-Mississippi stamp. Rare.
Very Good using traditional grading. Some pin holes and small edge nicks and small edge tears. Old time description penciled on the back including the grade "VG". Cool history to this note! Clean presentation on the face for the grade. Bright and bold Trans-Mississippi stamp!
Probably a PMG or PCGS Choice Fine 15 or 12, small edge tears, pin holes.
Genuine.
T
he Trans-Mississippi theatre located west of the Mississippi included all of Texas, Arkansas, Indian Territory and most of Louisiana. This area was strategic to the Confederacy for several reasons such as access to raw material, to manpower, and to Mexico by land avoiding the Union blockade. The Union also realized this, and devised a strategy to cut the Confederacy in two along the Mississippi River early in the War. It took two years, but by July 1863, the Confederacy west of the Mississippi was cut off. From a practical point of view it had been isolated by late 1862 with the effective control of most of the Mississippi River by the Union Navy.
Due to the distance from eastern manufacturing facilities, and having no significant engraving and currency printing facilities of its own to print large quantities of higher quality CSA money, the Trans-Mississippi Department was chronically short of cash. By the time General E. Kirby Smith took over the Department on March 7 1863, it had a serious cash shortage problem, with army and supplier payments woefully in arrears. Smith ordered earlier notes that were stored or cancelled to be re-issued using a variety of stamps to indicate that these notes were “revalidated” or good for commerce despite having been redeemed and/or effectively rendered obsolete by the Act of March 23, 1863, which had provisions for retiring notes that pre-dated the April 6, 1863 issue.
The Act of February 17, 1864 made matters worse, as this act taxed away the value of notes issued prior to that date. Smith stopped using his special revalidated notes, which caused significant problems in terms of retaining men in the army and paying suppliers. He substituted interim deposit receipts, (IDRs) which indicated that the bearer of older notes had returned them and was entitled to new notes whenever they might arrive in the Trans-Mississippi area from the east.
IDRs are beyond the scope of this work
[1]
, but the “Trans-Mississippi” notes are interesting collectibles themselves. They were issued at Huntsville, Texas, with one of several different varieties of stamps.
[2]
These include round and straight-line stamps, both of which could be black or red and dated February or March. There are also re-issued notes from Shreveport, Louisiana, and Houston, Texas, with a black stamp on the reverse. Figures 46, 47, 48 and 49 illustrate these stamps.
[1]
See
Confederate Treasury Certificates – A Collector’s Guide to IDRs
by George Tremmel, Pierre Fricke, John “Marty” Davis published in 2010.
[2]
Discovered in research done by the “Trainmen”, particularly George Tremmel.
___________________________________________________
This is a common Hoyer and Ludwig creation; a lower quality printed in 1862. It is the most common of the 1861 notes. The printing of this type was then passed on to J. T. Paterson. This type replaced the T-35. The female figure in the center represents Ceres, the Goddess of the Harvest, seated on a bale of cotton. She is holding a caduceus in her left hand with two serpents entwined. In the lower left corner is a sailor leaning on a capstan with a telescope in his hand. This note was “Receivable in payment for all dues except export dues and fundable in Confederate States stock bearing 8% interest six months after the ratification of a treaty of peace between the Confederate States and the United States.”
This type comes on lower quality paper, which did not wear too well. It was produced on a plate of eight notes which were plate lettered-numbered A-9 through A-16. The T-36 PF-7 “Third Series” is one of the old time great rarities; so much so, it was faked to fool collectors. Thian did not get his register correct, so one must look for remnants of parenthesis below the sailor and search for signs of alteration. Finally, no Third Series T-36 note has a serial number greater than 2289.
This is a common type in all grades except Choice Extremely Fine to Choice Unc. Rare in better grade with a Trans-Mississippi stamp!
A note about 3rd party grading. PCGS and PMG do a good job putting a floor on quality within a grade range and have become proficient in detecting repairs (though occasionally they miss something, or see something that is not there, as we all can).
Notes housed in Net or Apparent holders have a wide range of quality from very nice (in rare cases may be nearly choice) to dogs with major problems, so each needs to be evaluated on their own.
However, PMG and PCGS focus on technical grading due to circulation and damage and do not have a mechanism for evaluating condition or eye appeal - whether a note is average, better than average, choice or gem for the grade based on its color, trim and margins. The exception to this are slabbed notes of New or Uncirculated grades to some degree. This is important as Very Fine, Extremely Fine or AU notes can have a wide range of values depending on these factors not reflected in the slab grade. A fully framed Confederate or obsolete note is worth considerably to a lot more than one that is trimmed into the margin for the same grade. Likewise, color is important. These factors can affect the value of a note by 50%, 2-1 or even 3-1, e.g., an AU 58 (PPQ or not) T-20 1861 CSA note trimmed into the margin is worth between 0 and 0. The same grade, AU 58 (PPQ or not), with a full frame and good color/inking is worth something like 0 to 00 depending on eye appeal. I will continue to use the terms plus for above average, choice and gem to mean varying degrees of superiority of condition and eye appeal of a note within a grade as documented in my book which is based on what collectors seek out and pay premiums for.
In coins, we’ve seen the third party graders add things like full bell lines, full head, full bands which reflected the market. I’d expect either the grading services or another party to do the same for paper money. If you are just buying the number on the holder for the best price, you may well be buying low end notes for the grade!
Pierre Fricke.  Immediate Past President of the Society of Paper Money Collectors;  Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG); Professional Currency Dealers Association (PCDA); ANA, EAC, etc...
BuyVintageMoney.
Author of the standard guide book to Confederate money - Collecting Confederate Money Field Edition 2014.
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