One of the biggest expenses for a business is the use of advertising and marketing. While it may cost a pretty penny, it is also one of the biggest tools in branding a successful business. Positioning a company’s future through ad campaigns and marketing against its competitors is a key contributor to attracting new customers or clients. Attention and awareness are what you are hoping to gain from those ad campaigns. Even back during the Civil War era, advertising was important. One of the ways that got people’s attention was through the use of Confederate paper money.
A banknote advertisement was vastly attention-getting. Printing ads on real money, however, was expensive and not to mention illegal. Money that had lost its value and was no longer in circulation, on the other hand, was fair game and used as a way to advertise for many years even pre-Civil War. Ads were sometimes printed on various banknotes from banks that were no longer in business, also referred to as “broken banks.” A majority of the pre-Civil War advertising notes were printed designs that resembled currency and were specially printed as such.
Using real money to print advertisements became even more popular after the Civil War. Confederate notes were readily available at low prices. Although there are hoards of advertising notes out there, those printed on Confederate paper money is more desirable to collectors. Most advertisements are printed on the backs of the currency either horizontally or vertically. There are those advertisements that are more common among the notes than others.
Advertisements on real Confederate notes range from messages like “The Great Broad Gauge, Atlantic & Great Western Route, between the East and the West” to a “Confederate Veteran’s Reunion” to the “Ford’s Hotel, Richmond, Va.” Those advertisements printed on genuine notes have increased in value over the years according to their condition, ranging from Fine to Very Fine and “exceptionally nice” examples.
Source: Confederate States Paper Money: Civil War Currency From the South (12th Edition) by George S. Cuhaj & William Brandimore