$5 Chemicograph Back PCGS 64 AND July1950 Numismatist Magazine CSA Sold as a Set. Sold as a Lot of 2 items. One of ONLY 10 Graded 64, 2 Graded Lower at 63, NONE HIGHER - 12 TOTAL.

I've checked it out... Please understand that there may be 'a very little amount' of pen markings in the book. USUALLY NONE, but will be very minor if any! It is passed down to you via 'another enthusiastic' collector just like you! PLUS... The magazine is 76 years old so there will be a little discoloration.

For other magazine issues, dates and Notes, PLEASE see the eBay store: TEXAN

Philip Hartley Chase was an intelligent man and very good individual (1886 – 1977). He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1907, from MIT in 1909 and Harvard in 1910 and was a Chief Engineer with the Philadelphia Electric Company. And yes, CSA Currency and Chemicograph backs were his passion… READ ON…

> The American Civil War took place from April 12 1861 to May 26 1865 (4 years, 1 month and 2 weeks). The Southern States suffered currency counterfeiting, rampant hyper-inflation and a multitude of forged tax receipts.

> To reduce monetary forgeries, the Secretary of the Treasury for the Confederate States of America [CSA] outsourced the manufacturing of special printing electrotype plates to S. Straker & Sons (Great Britain). They were designed for more complex back printing on the Confederate 1864 - issue Treasury Notes that were never used… OH WHAT A STORY!

> At the start of 1863, the Union blockade in the American Civil War was capturing over half of all blockade runners attempting to enter the South. The Union Navy had crippled the CSA’s cotton exports (98% of their Economy) and prevented smugglers running arms and ammunition into any of the CSA’s eight major ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

One of these ports, Wilmington North Carolina, enjoyed protection in the shadow of Fort Fisher and relative success in the face of the blockade. But after March 1864, the CSA officials abandoned hope that a special set of Chemicograph printing plates for their final series of currency would ever reach Wilmington’s defensing wall at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

> Christopher Memminger, the first CSA Secretary of the Treasury, approved outsourcing the manufacture of those new printing plates. S.G. Jamison, one of his staff, wrote in a report that “The style is so different in the two countries”, and so the new notes would be more difficult for the Union to imitate. The CSA hired Straker to create the plates. Thay made them using an electrotyping process, a drawn-out electric chemical procedure called ‘Chemicograph’. Once completed, they were first shipped to Nassau in the West Indies on multiple voyages and then were to be run by those smugglers into Wilmington. Well, did NOT work out! The Union Navy captured most… if not all of them.

> For all their detail however, the plates were never used for issued CSA currency due to their seizure. An entry in the American Journal of Numismatics a decade later mentions a man named Charles Chaplin had purchased some of the plates (found in the attic of a CSA General!) before they were melted for much needed WAR scrap metal. A common practice of the Union Navy after confiscating cargo from blockade runners.

> In the early 20th century one complete set came into the possession of Philip H. Chase. He struck limited editions from them starting around 1949. His articles and advertisements appeared in ‘The Numismatist’ magazine throughout the 1950s. He then eventually donated the original plates to the Smithsonian Institution Washington D.C., where a full set still resides. All of his notes and background information were given to the ‘Dartmouth Rauner Libraries Archives and Manuscripts’ (1959-1965 Collections, MS-493).

> Chase’s reprints are the only way collectors can see what the intended backs would have looked like.

NO CHARGE – Shipped from TEXAS USA to your front door for FREE!

Thank You for Looking! I'm an 'OLD' guy just trying to survive my RETIREMENT! Regards, Scott 😊