The $10 Bill....

In 1861, the first $10 bill was issued near the outset of the Civil War.

It featured a portrait of Lincoln and is the only time a sitting president appeared on U.S. currency.

In 1861, a $10 bill could have bought you an entire barrel of flour, a month’s stay in a New York City tenement, or a ride on the Great Eastern steamship from Manhattan to Cape May, New Jersey.

In 1901, the $10 bill depicted explorers Lewis & Clark on the edges with a large American bison in the middle, and bought you ten private ballroom-dancing classes, a housepainter’s labor for eight days or a full eye exam and 10 pairs of glasses.

In 1929, all U.S. currency was changed to its standard size of today. Despite the popular belief, the car on your 1929 standardized $10 bill is not a Model T Ford, but a composite of cars from the day. In 1929, your $10 bill got you a year’s worth of accident and sickness insurance, a waffle iron, or a one-minute phone call from New York City to London.

In 1942, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, special $10 bills were printed for Hawaii with the state’s name printed on the front and back and the serial numbers printed in brown ink instead of red. This was done so that if the Japanese invaded Hawaii, the U.S. Treasury would declare these $10 bills worthless.

Keep an eye out for the new $10 bill coming early in 2006. Its design is still mostly green, but now features shades of orange, yellow and red and has renderings of the Statue of Liberty torch and the words, "We The People..."

Why Is Ben On The C-Note?

Have you ever wondered why Benjamin Franklin is the only person featured on American paper currency who is not a former President of the United States? To find the answer, we must travel back to Ben Franklin’s day, but make a quick stop in an America on the brink of civil war.

When Abraham Lincoln took over the presidency, despite nearly one hundred years of existence, our fine country still did not have a federal, nation-wide currency. Realizing that war was eminent, and that a federal currency would be needed to fund and control war-time spending in the North, Mr. Lincoln ordered the first printing of the US federal dollar.

So, what did America do for money for the first hundred years? Would you believe that local banks printed currency notes themselves? You went to your bank, withdrew a note for a pre-designated amount and traded it with a store owner for goods on the pretense that the store owner could go to your bank and draw on the bank’s funds or have money put in his account to cover the amount of your purchase.

Bank notes back then worked much like a check works today. One of the main problems with this bank note system was that at any given time in pre-Lincoln America, up to 2/3 of the bank notes being passed around were counterfeit. In fact, one of the major British war efforts in the 1770s was to flood the American colonies with fake bank notes to destabilize our new, independent economy.

Some of the bank notes were easily forged by the monarchy, while others were very difficult to copy. And whose were the most difficult to copy? Why, the ones designed and printed by Mr. Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, or course. Hence, the well-deserved honor of gracing the $100 bill.