Drafts From The Past

The term “Exonumia” has many interpretations to a collector, the foremost of these is: “Outside of Numismatics” meaning of course peripheral to the nature of money collecting.

Within the past 5 years I pleasantly discovered a collecting field that is very interesting indeed and in close proximity to banking and bank notes, bank drafts, bank checks and receipts.

To me, the interest of collecting these drafts is their relationship to the history and events of the years of issue, for example:

1863 The middle of the War Between the States.

1867 Southern States Reconstruction Era.

1876 The Centennial Year of the United States. The Battle of Little Big Horn.

1892-93 Year of the Columbian Exposition

1901 End of the Victorian Age

1904 Start of the Panama Canal project

The vignettes, advertising and logos from various companies are as interesting to me as the intaglios of our various US Bank notes.

All of the items in my collection have been purchased at reasonable prices from various coin dealers at shows within Wisconsin. Fate and providence has entrusted me these fine artifacts of a time gone by.

Among these drafts, interesting and famous names often “pop up”. Names like: Winchester, Ingalls, Elliot, Skelton, Quackenbush, Hughes, Dupree, Weber, Hoover, Simmons, Bowen, Crane, McCabe, Brenner, Kirby, Davis, Nicholson, Deters, Wilson, Burris, Dempsey, Howard, Alexander, etc.

Also included in this collection is a company check to a bank for $30,000: a goodly sum for 1898.

The pen & ink handwriting of each period is varied: from grotesquely crude to John Hancock calligraphically fancy. Many drafts also include various colorful document and revenue stamps of the era of issue.

The personal nature and aspect of writing a check then, was much different than today with the age of technology in the modern forefront of change.

To the nostalgic passionate collector and history buff these desirable elegant ancient pieces of paper are part of an age that is gone forever.

On occasion many are found bearing the usual stains of age that graphically ad to their character. Many of the reverses bear signatures and stamps.

History is indeed all around us if we do a bit of searching and pleasantly surprisingly discovering it in any form, as these bank drafts, checks, and receipts of long ago.

At this writing end, my focus point has been these historical retrospective collectible artifacts, with visibly the human touch indeed.

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