Confederate Bond Deposit Form

JBK

In the 1880s, British owners of Civil War Confederate bonds banded together to try (unsuccessfully) to get the US government to redeem the bonds.

Here is an old ebay purchase I came across today. It is a deposit form that a bondholder filled out to register his deposit of Confederate bonds pending the legal proceedings.

Staircoins

Nice document. I had a related item but sold it a couple years ago. This is the actual Scrip Certificate that would have been exchanged. Notice that it references a specific Deposit Form as you've shown (In this case it's Deposit Form #4057).

Each Scrip Certificate was supported by a matching Deposit Form, which listed the specific bonds that were placed on deposit totaling the amount of that Certificate. Of course, the bondholders were unsuccessful in their efforts.

JBK

Nice!

johnny9434

nice

percyb

Very cool. I have a few Confederate notes “Cotton” backed currency but have never seen one of these before. Thanks for posting!!

Staircoins

Collectors of CSA material may recall the flood of Confederate bonds that came onto the market 10-15 years ago. Seemingly appearing out of nowhere, these bonds originated in Europe (mostly London, but some in Paris as well), and had been held since the 1880s in the vaults of institutions just like the one featured here.

Judging by the serial number of these two documents alone, this one entity issued over 4000 certificates, each representing a group of CSA bonds on which they attempted to collect from the US government. The Deposit Form shown above lists over 40 CSA bonds. It is unknown how many the Scrip Certificate represents, but as most bonds were in $50 and $100 denominations, a reasonable guess would be somewhere around 50.

So with over 4,000 certificates issued - representing roughly 45 certificates each - means this one company may have held as much as 180,000 individual CSA bonds on which they were attempting to collect. Even if this estimate is on the high side, that's a lot of bonds!

percyb

@Staircoins said:
Collectors of CSA material may recall the flood of Confederate bonds that came onto the market 10-15 years ago. Seemingly appearing out of nowhere, these bonds originated in Europe (mostly London, but some in Paris as well), and had been held since the 1880s in the vaults of institutions just like the one featured here.

Judging by the serial number of these two documents alone, this one entity issued over 4000 certificates, each representing a group of CSA bonds on which they attempted to collect from the US government. The Deposit Form shown above lists over 40 CSA bonds. It is unknown how many the Scrip Certificate represents, but as most bonds were in $50 and $100 denominations, a reasonable guess would be somewhere around 50.

So with over 4,000 certificates issued - representing roughly 45 certificates each - means this one company may have held as much as 180,000 individual CSA bonds on which they were attempting to collect. Even if this estimate is on the high side, that's a lot of bonds!

Thanks for sharing your insights about these docs!