Continental Currency
Scarce Eighty Dollars - Highest Denomination Continental
Continental Congress. January 14, 1779. Eighty Dollars. Choice EF to About Uncirculated.
Fr. CC-102. This $80 Continental note has the highest denomination of the January 14, 1779 issue and is the final Friedberg catalog number for the Continental Congress issued series. This note is very well centered on both face and back, signed by Roberts and Masoner in bright red and brown ink upon clean specially watermarked official paper. The Eighty Dollars denomination is worth a good premium.
The production method in 1779 for any note of two colors meant extra work for the printer. Each sheet had to be placed onto the printing press twice, one time to print the red text and a second pass to add the black. Each time a color was printed, the paper sheet had to be hung up to dry for a day and then laid back down, hopefully in the same exact place as proper alignment was critical, to add the second color. Obviously, this was a far more timely procedure that added extra work and cost. That is a major reason we see so few Colonial issues that are multicolor.