Monday, Apr. 13, 2009

State auctions Civil War-era money

eBay payoffs helping state Archives and History in tough budget times

The South Carolina Department of Archives and History has enough cash stored away in cardboard boxes to make a significant dent in the state's budget deficit.

The only problem is, it's worthless. Or is it? The department is sorting through 40 cubic feet of banknotes issued by the Bank of South Carolina during the Civil War and selling them on eBay -- some of them for dozens of times their face value.

It's no huge moneymaker -- the state had raked in $2,200 for the 24 bills it had sold by the end of last week, according to Keith Shirley, the state's online sales manager for surplus property. But it's virtually free money at a time when every dollar counts.

"It's actually money that's enabling us to continue doing what we're supposed to be doing, that we're supposed to be getting state money for," said Rodger Stroup, director of the Department of Archives and History.

Each of the antique bills has been drawing 200 hits or more on eBay, and a $4 note listed on a government surplus sales site called govdeals.com got more than 500 visitors, Shirley said.

A minimum bid is set on each bill, ranging from $10 to $150, he said. It costs $2 to $3 to list each item on eBay, and govdeals.com charges 7.5% of the sale price, he said.

Shirley packs the bills between pieces of cardboard and ships them in bubble wrap envelopes marked "Do not bend." The delivery charge is usually between $3 and $5, depending on the amount of insurance, he said.

State law allows the proceeds of the sales to be used only for the preservation, conservation or enhancing of public access to historical documents -- such as buying acid-free storage boxes, and computer equipment for digital archives, Stroup said.

But with a 22 percent cut in its budget since last July, that's something the department would have had to put on hold without its rediscovered cash cow.

The bank notes were stashed in the basement of the Statehouse from the 1880s until the early 1960s, when they were turned over to archives, Stroup said.

"It's been kind of a puzzle to the staff as to what to do with them," he said. "They're not really documents, which is what state archives deals with."

The notes had been redeemed -- at a substantial loss to the owners -- in the 1880s, when the Supreme Court ruled that the defunct state bank couldn't declare bankruptcy, according to Dr. Jack Meyer, a retired University of South Carolina history professor.

These are not Confederate bills but state-issued bills, said Meyer, who is volunteering his efforts at sorting through the cache to prepare bills for sale. Confederate money was worthless after the Confederacy fell, he said.

The federal government didn't issue any paper currency from the end of the Revolutionary War until the Civil War, so many states, in the South as well as the North, printed paper money, Meyer said. But most of it was destroyed when the federal government started circulating greenbacks in 1862.

The cache of South Carolina cash was supposed to have been destroyed as well, according to Stroup, the archives department director.

"Some of them were, but for some reason lots of them were not," he said.

Tennessee State Historian Walter T. Durham said Confederate money circulated in Tennessee during the Civil War had the image of the state's capitol on it, but he doesn't know of any state-issued currency surviving the fall of Nashville in 1862.

Matt Carrothers, a spokesman for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office, which oversees archives, said the Peach State is not selling any state-issued currency.

Since he started working on the project a few weeks ago, Meyer has made it through only one box, which had bills with a face value he estimates at "several hundred thousand dollars." Many of them are 5, 10 and 25-cent bills.

According to Shirley, the online sales manager, the first batch of about 100 notes sold for between $30 and $250 apiece. A $10 note went for $217, he said. Someone gave $40 for a 5-cent note, he said.

The state has no specific fundraising goal, Shirley said.

The state isn't auctioning off all its historical money. One set of uncancelled bills is being kept in the Department of Archives and History, one set will go to the state museum and another to the Confederate Relic Room.

And all the sales aren't being done online, either.

"We'll sell some of the more valuable ones in a live auction later," Stroup said.

The notes had been redeemed -- at a substantial loss to the owners -- in the 1880s, when the Supreme Court ruled that the defunct state bank couldn't declare bankruptcy, according to Dr. Jack Meyer, a retired University of South Carolina history professor.

These are not Confederate bills but state-issued bills, said Meyer, who is volunteering his efforts at sorting through the cache to prepare bills for sale. Confederate money was worthless after the Confederacy fell, he said.

The federal government didn't issue any paper currency from the end of the Revolutionary War until the Civil War, so many states, in the South as well as the North, printed paper money, Meyer said. But most of it was destroyed when the federal government started circulating greenbacks in 1862.

The cache of South Carolina cash was supposed to have been destroyed as well, according to Stroup, the archives department director.

"Some of them were, but for some reason lots of them were not," he said.

Tennessee State Historian Walter T. Durham said Confederate money circulated in Tennessee during the Civil War had the image of the state's capitol on it, but he doesn't know of any state-issued currency surviving the fall of Nashville in 1862.

Matt Carrothers, a spokesman for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office, which oversees archives, said the Peach State is not selling any state-issued currency.

Since he started working on the project a few weeks ago, Meyer has made it through only one box, which had bills with a face value he estimates at "several hundred thousand dollars." Many of them are 5, 10 and 25-cent bills.

According to Shirley, the online sales manager, the first batch of about 100 notes sold for between $30 and $250 apiece. A $10 note went for $217, he said. Someone gave $40 for a 5-cent note, he said.

The state has no specific fundraising goal, Shirley said.

The state isn't auctioning off all its historical money. One set of uncancelled bills is being kept in the Department of Archives and History, one set will go to the state museum and another to the Confederate Relic Room.

And all the sales aren't being done online, either.

"We'll sell some of the more valuable ones in a live auction later," Stroup said.

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