#21: Secret Civil War Stash
This is a pretty interesting old home discovery. Someone found a stack of old bills hidden in a secret drawer. This situation sounds like something out of a movie, but it really happened. However, it wasn’t a collection of old bills that our storyteller could cash in at the bank. If these bills look unrecognizable, that’s because they are Confederate bills that were issued during the Civil War.
The original poster’s home was built in 1885. That means someone kept these defunct bills after the Civil War and intentionally hid them. Did they think they would be worth something again? We all know how that turned out. Confederate bills, nicknamed “greybacks” for their paper color, were promissory notes that were never backed by any asset, such as gold. As the Confederacy’s loss became more obvious, these bills lost more of their theoretical value.