Fr. 240. 1886 $2 Silver Certificate. PMG Choice Uncirculated 64 EPQ.

Fr. 240. 1886 $2 Silver Certificate. PMG Choice Uncirculated 64 EPQ.，Very bright and clean paper supports strong ink tones throughout. The nice margins, sharp corners and clean straight edges speak to the excellent preservation, while traces of embossing on the back illustrate the fresh, untampered state of the note overall. This piece has just as much visual appeal as some Gem notes we have seen in the past. It presents the popular "fancy back" type, which was short-lived but is very appealing to collectors today.<p><p>The story of the 1886 $1 and $2 Silver Certificates is interesting. As quantities of silver dollars in the care of the Treasury Department grew, due to the requirements of the 1878 Bland-Allison Act, Secretary of the Treasury Manning proposed a plan to transfer silver dollars back to the public. This was the birth of this particular series of $1 and $2 notes that, according to financial historian Neil Carothers (1930), had no formal legal tender status. They were simply notes that directly entitled the holder to the equal face value in silver dollars from Treasury vaults (which was properly legal tender). Thus, it was hoped that these small denomination notes would circulate widely, and that their inevitable redemption would draw silver from storage and move it back into the hands of the populace. The notes circulated freely as if they were proper legal tender, as Manning had hoped, but this did not substantially address the overwhelming volume of silver dollars, largely due to the Mints continued production of coins that were simply not needed in circulation. Coinage of the dollars ended after 1904 and 14 years later the 1918 Pittman Act provided for the melting of 350 million silver dollars to alleviate the problem. Oddly enough, coinage of silver dollars resumed in 1921 and continued until 1935. <p><p>PMG has graded just under 100 examples of this variety, with only 15 ranking as Uncirculated notes. Though this example did not quite make the Gem category, it is notable that only four notes have been graded finer by this service. An important offering for the quality conscious collector. This one has been off the market since the time we last handled it in 1968, just shy of 50 years ago. <p>，From the A.J. Vanderbilt Collection. Earlier from the Art Lovi Collection, Stacks sale of September 1968, lot 199.，