United States Notes

Continental Currency (1775-1779): History, Values, and Real vs. Replica

Continental Currency was the first money a United States Congress ever issued, printed in Philadelphia while the Revolutionary War was being fought and signed by hand, one clerk at a time. Eleven emissions came off the press between 1775 and 1779, and the notes that survive are among the oldest pieces of American federal paper a collector can still buy.

11 emissions 1775 to 1779 Hall and Sellers, Philadelphia Funded at 100 to 1 in 1790

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Last updated: September 2026

What is Continental Currency?

Continental Currency is the paper money the Continental Congress authorized from 1775 onward to finance the Revolutionary War. It was the first currency issued in the name of the united colonies rather than a single colony, and it paid for the army before any tax system existed to replace it.

Congress had no power to tax in 1775. It had a war to fund and a printing press, so it used the press. Between June 1775 and 1779 Congress ordered eleven emissions of Continental Currency, and those bills accounted for 82 percent of the federal government's income across that period, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which holds a box of the notes in its special collections. The economist Farley Grubb of the University of Delaware puts the arithmetic slightly differently and slightly more precisely: by the end of 1779 a total of $199,990,000 in net new Continental dollars had been emitted, and that medium carried over three quarters of congressional spending (NBER Working Paper 17276).

One detail is worth holding onto, because almost every popular account gets it wrong. Grubb's reading of the congressional resolutions is that the Continental dollar was not designed as pure fiat money at all. The early emissions carried stated redemption dates and a specie redemption option, which makes them closer to a zero-interest bearer bond than to a modern banknote (Grubb, "The Failure of the Continental Dollar"). Congress simply never made that design clear to the public, and later emissions let it fade from view.

How many emissions of Continental Currency were there?

There were eleven emissions, running from the bills dated 10 May 1775 to the bills dated 14 January 1779. Each emission carries its own date on the face, and that printed date is how collectors identify a Continental note before they look at anything else on the bill.

The table below lists the eleven emissions as the Massachusetts Historical Society catalogs them in its own holdings, with the first congressional authorization for each emission from Grubb's reconstruction of the Journals of the Continental Congress. Several emissions received further authorizations after the first one, so the amount shown is the opening figure rather than the final total for that date.

Emission dates and denominations as cataloged by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Authorisation amounts and dates from Table 1 of Farley Grubb, NBER Working Paper 17276, drawn from the Journals of the Continental Congress. Grubb dates the seventh emission's authorizing resolution to 26 February 1777; the Massachusetts Historical Society catalogs the bills themselves as the 28 February 1777 issue.

Two features of that table are worth reading twice. The seventeenth of February 1776 emission is the one that introduced fractional bills, in sixths, thirds, halves and two thirds of a dollar. And the January 1779 emission runs up through $35, $45, $55, $65 and $70, denominations that exist nowhere else in American money and that tell you plainly how far prices had already moved.

Who designed Continental Currency and what do the emblems mean?

Benjamin Franklin designed the emblems at the request of Congress, the silversmith and engraver Elisha Gallaudet cut them, and Hall and Sellers of Philadelphia printed the sheets on paper made at Ivy Mills in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The designs were arguments as much as decoration.

The American Antiquarian Society, describing an uncut sheet of the four fractional bills dated 17 February 1776, records the front device as a sundial with the Latin word Fugio, meaning "I flee", above the phrase Mind Your Business. The back carries thirteen interlocking rings, one for each colony, circling the motto "American Congress We Are One". Franklin designed both; Gallaudet cut the elaborate borders and the interlocked lettering.

The other Franklin contribution is the one a collector can feel rather than read. Franklin had been putting nature prints, inked impressions taken from real leaves, on colonial Pennsylvania notes since 1739, because no two leaves share a vein structure and a forger cannot cut one by hand (US Currency Education Program). The South Street Seaport Museum, cataloguing more than 150 Continental notes from its Seaman's Bank for Savings collection in June 2026, describes the same defenses on these bills: leaf impressions pressed into the printing surface, plus mica flakes and blue fibers spun into the paper itself. Franklin's old partnership with David Hall, which became Hall and Sellers, sits behind every authentic Continental note.

Did the British counterfeit Continental Currency?

Yes, and at a scale that changed the notes themselves. Great Britain counterfeited the 20 May 1777 and 11 April 1778 emissions so heavily that Congress recalled both issues in their entirety, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society's account of the collection it holds.

That recall is one of the most consequential facts in early American numismatics and it is also the reason some emissions are scarcer than their authorized totals suggest. British forces and Loyalist printers understood the arithmetic clearly: destroying confidence in the currency was a direct attack on the war effort, because a Congress with no tax base had nothing to fall back on. Counterfeit and genuine notes circulated side by side, and the confusion did the damage whether or not any particular forgery was convincing.

The printers answered with material rather than law. The Seaport Museum's cataloguing notes record the defenses growing bolder emission by emission, with colors and patterns intensifying as the pressure rose. If you want the longer arc of that contest, from colonial nature prints to modern security threads, our guide to spotting counterfeit banknotes and our page on the history of counterfeiting both pick up the thread.

Why did Continental Currency lose its value?

Because Congress kept emitting bills without any revenue system behind them, while thirteen states printed their own bills of credit at the same time. The glut of paper depreciated all of it, and the Continental dollar fell furthest because Congress had the least ability to redeem what it issued.

The depreciation is easiest to read as a ratio against hard coin. In January 1777 it took $1.25 in Continental Currency to buy one dollar in specie; by January 1781 it took $100 in Continentals to obtain one dollar in hard money (Massachusetts Historical Society). Grubb's series has the Continental dollar at forty to one in specie by the end of 1779, the point at which Congress permanently discontinued the emissions.

Two things happened next, and both are in Grubb's account. By 1781 Continental dollars had stopped circulating as currency and the markets for trading them disappeared. Then at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 the power to emit paper money was removed from the new Constitution outright, a direct response to what the delegates had just watched. Congress funded the remaining Continental dollars in 1790 at one hundred for one dollar in federal government bonds, and few holders took the offer. Every later request for better terms was refused.

James Narron and David Skeie, writing for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on 11 April 2014, put the lesson in James Madison's words from 1779: the value of money depended on the credit of the state issuing it rather than on its quantity (Liberty Street Economics).

Where does "not worth a Continental" come from?

From the currency itself, in the years after 1780, when the bills had stopped circulating and holding them meant holding a claim nobody expected Congress to honour. The phrase became a common derogatory expression and it outlived the money by more than two centuries.

Grubb dates the saying to the period when Continental dollars had ceased to function as a currency and the trading markets had closed. It survives in American English today as a stock comparison, which is a strange afterlife for a currency that funded a revolution and then vanished. For collectors the phrase is also slightly unfair: the notes did their job, which was to move real resources to the Continental Army for four years while no other mechanism existed, and the printing that destroyed their purchasing power is the same printing that kept the army in the field.

What is a Continental Currency note worth today?

It depends almost entirely on the emission, the condition and whether the note has been certified. Documented public sales run from four figures for ordinary circulated single notes into six figures for the finest graded examples and for intact uncut sheets with a collecting pedigree attached.

The table below lists results that can be tied to a named auction house, a named sale and a published grade. It is deliberately short. Continental Currency prices circulate as folklore more than almost any other American series, and a number attached to no sale is not a value.

Prices realized as reported by CoinWeek for the November 2023 sale and by CoinWeek for the Spring 2025 sale, both including the buyer's premium. The grade and pedigree of the uncut panel are from the Stack's Bowers pre-sale announcement.

Both of those are exceptional pieces, and neither describes the market a new collector will meet. Ordinary circulated single notes from the commoner emissions trade for a small fraction of these figures, but no dated price guide by grade could be read while this page was being prepared, so no range is quoted here. Ask any dealer for the specific emission, the Friedberg CC number and the grade before you ask for a price, and read our guide to what determines banknote value first. If the note is certified, our comparison of graded versus raw banknotes explains what that holder is actually guaranteeing.

How do you tell a real Continental note from a replica?

Start with the paper, not the printing. Genuine Continental bills were printed on eighteenth-century rag paper with mica flakes and blue fibers worked into the sheet, signed in ink by hand and numbered by hand. Modern souvenir replicas are printed on parchment-look stock with the signatures and numbers printed as part of the image.

A practical checklist, in the order a dealer would work through it:

• Handwritten signatures and serial numbers. The Massachusetts Historical Society's item-level catalog records a different signer or pair of signers on almost every bill, with individual serial numbers, because Congress had clerks sign the notes one at a time. Jonathan Shee, T. Lawrence, F. Kuhl, A. Morris Jr., J. M. Nesbitt and dozens of others appear across the collection. A replica has the same name and the same number on every copy.
• Paper with things in it. Mica flakes and blue fibers in the sheet are documented on genuine notes by the South Street Seaport Museum's cataloguing. Replicas are usually a smooth, uniformly tea-toned modern stock.
• Impressed nature prints. The leaf devices were pressed into the printing surface, so on a genuine note the back has the plate impression of a real leaf rather than a flat reproduction of a picture of one.
• The word COPY. Many modern reproductions are marked COPY somewhere on the design, often small and often on the back. Look for it before anything else.
• Size and trim. Continental bills were cut by hand from sheets, so the margins are irregular and the dimensions vary. Souvenir sheets are machine trimmed to a uniform modern size.

Our page on banknote replicas and novelty notes covers the wider category, and specimen notes explains a third class of paper that is genuine but was never issued.

How do you start collecting Continental Currency?

Pick one emission and learn it properly before you buy across the series. A date set of the eleven emissions is the classic goal, but a single well chosen note from 1776 in honest circulated condition teaches you more than three problem notes bought for the date alone.

Three decisions do most of the work. First, decide whether you want certification. Continental notes attract replicas and restoration, and a PMG or PCGS Banknote holder settles both questions before you buy. Second, decide what condition means to you: these bills are two hundred and fifty years old, they were folded into pockets and carried through a war, and a clean circulated example with full margins is a better object than a pressed one with a bright face. Third, buy the emission you actually care about. The February 1776 fractional bills carry Franklin's sundial and the thirteen linked rings, the 1779 bills carry denominations that exist nowhere else, and the May 1775 bills are the first federal money America ever printed.

Planet Banknote's United States inventory runs from antebellum bank notes through Civil War and National Bank Note issues, and availability moves with what comes in. Browse the current United States banknotes selection, then work outward through the history of US paper money to see where the Continental fits in the sequence, the United States banknotes reference for the classes of currency that followed, or forward to the greenbacks that reintroduced federal paper eighty-six years later. Collectors drawn to wartime American paper often move next to Confederate currency, which faced a very similar problem and answered it a very similar way.

Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.