Silver certificates
A silver certificate is a US note that once promised to pay the bearer in silver. Redemption ended in 1968, and what is left is a collectable that still spends at face value. Which series you have decides almost everything about what it is worth.
Start with the seal
On a small-size note — the modern dimensions — a silver certificate has a blue Treasury seal and blue serial numbers, where a Federal Reserve Note has green. The two wartime exceptions are the brown-seal HAWAII and yellow-seal North Africa notes of 1935A. If the note is noticeably larger than modern currency, it is a large-size issue and predates 1928.
The series
| Series | Size | Denominations | From, circulated |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Small | $1 | $2 – $4 |
| 1935 | Small | $1 | $2 – $5 |
| 1953 | Small | $5, $10 | $7 – $14 |
| 1934 | Small | $1, $5, $10 | $9 – $20 |
| 1928 Funnyback | Small | $1 | $15 – $45 |
| 1923 Horseblanket | Large | $1 | $50 – $160 |
| 1899 Black Eagle | Large | $1 | $70 – $220 |
| 1896 Educational Series | Large | $1, $2, $5 | $250 – $800 |
Where these numbers come from
Unlike the serial number odds and star note print runs elsewhere on this site, these figures are not computed and do not come from a government production report — no such dataset exists for silver certificate prices. They reflect commonly observed dealer and auction ranges, they are wide on purpose, and a real price for your note comes from completed sales of the same series in the same grade.
What actually drives the price
- Condition, above everything. The spread between a worn note and a crisp one inside a single series is wider than the spread between most series.
- Size and age. Large-size notes — anything before 1928 — are a different market and start at a much higher floor.
- Wartime and experimental varieties. A brown or yellow seal, or a small red R or S, turns a common 1935 into something worth many times more.
- The serial number. A collector pattern in the eight digits adds a premium on top of the series value, and almost nobody checks. Check a serial for collector patterns takes a few seconds.
Silver certificates are not Federal Reserve Notes, so the letter before the serial is a block letter rather than a district. Pattern detection applies normally; the district decoding in our tools does not.