1869 $100 Legal Tender Rainbow PMG 15, rare Fr# 168 with serial# W45508 and plate D.

Issued in just one signature and seal combination, Fr 168 bears the Treasury signatures of Allison and Spinner. Although such bills may have plentiful in their time, probably mainly in bank vaults, today fewer than 30 examples total can be accounted for.

Of the 28 known notes in existence, just four are listed as Uncirculated. One resides permanently in the ANA museum, and the others are firmly settled in private collections.

None of the Uncirculated examples have appeared at auction since 1998. In 2000, one was offered in a dealer pricelist for $275,000. From 1997, only about a third of the surviving pieces have been offered for sale, though there have been no appearances since late 2007 when a PMG Extremely Fine 40 EPQ sold for $184,000 as part of the Dr. Edward and Joanne Dauer Collection.

Our piece is an attractive Fine, with a bright swath of anti-counterfeiting blue color and strong design details. Some repairs are noted by PMG, all of which were executed by a professional and are really only visible if the note is 10 x power lupe.

This rarity is No. 20 of the 100 Greatest American Currency Notes, Q. David Bowers and David M. Sundman. The face images are interesting in their juxtaposition. On the left is the late martyred Lincoln, whose election in november 1860 resulted in the formation of the Confederate States of America and, in April 1861, the Civil War–although it might have happened in other circumstances, absent Lincoln.

The portrait of Lincoln was engraved by Charles Burt from a photograph taken by Anthony Berger in Mathew A Brady’s studio on February 9, 1864. To the right is an allegorical scene titled Reconstruction, with a standing goddess as an architect of postwar recovery, with a carpenter’s square on the table before her. Seated nearby is a boy holding a scroll illustrated with a domed pergola with a circle of 12 stars around a central object, perhaps the 13th star.

Lincoln had nothing to do with the Reconstruction movement, which was necessarily begun after his death, bungled, many believe, by his successor, Andrew Johnson.

In any event, national currency motifs, which emphasized Union military figures to a fare-thee-well, did not seem to help the cause much.

The Rainbow series of 1869 is one of the most beautiful executions of paper money, not only in the United States, but also in the world. The paper itself contains a blue tint and the seals are bright red. The scroll-work and green serial numbers make its nickname self-explanatory.

Issued in the $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 denominations collecting the full series has become a “Golden Fleece” to the collecting community.

The single pictures Washington and Columbus discovering America. The deuce contains a portrait of Thomas Jefferson and the Capitol, the five, Andrew Jackson and a Pioneer Family. The ten showed the great orator Daniel Webster and an illustration motif titled Introduction of the Old World to the New. The twenties have red behind the serial numbers, along with its engravings of Alexander Hamilton and the goddess Liberty. The twenty has the additional distinction of showing the Roman numeral XX 103 times and the Arabic 20 is employed 105 times on each note. The fifty and hundred are extremely rare with the portraits of Henry Clay/Peace and Abraham Lincoln/Architecture respectively. The hundred dollar is the most rare of all the denominations!

Price $35,500

Call Us at 302-765-3352 for Orders
or Email Us using the form below.

Related posts:

1. Fr. 17 1862 $1 Legal Tender - VF
2. FR. 347 THE 1ST 1890 $1 TREASURY ORNATE BACK - Fine