Bank note reporter

Bank note reporters or counterfeit detectors[a] were periodicals published in the United States in the mid-19th century.

Before the establishment of a uniform paper currency in the United States each of the country's hundreds of banks issued its own distinct notes which led to widespread counterfeiting.

[3] Some popular titles, such as John Thompson's Bank Note and Commercial Reporter claimed as many as 100,000 subscribers.

[2]: 235 Before the existence of dedicated periodicals for the purpose, local newspapers regularly published tables of discount rates for bank notes.

The first non-specialized newspaper to do so regularly may have been The American in New York City, which published a feature titled "Bank Note Exchange" twice weekly, beginning July 1819.

A month after the pamphlet's publication, the men issued a three page postscript with updates on new counterfeit bills, but published nothing further on the subject after that.

(As early as 1823, he had also been publishing annual almanacs which contained very brief information on discount rates and counterfeit identification.

[3] Another work, the Autobiographical Counterfeit Detector, printed facsimiles of the current signatures of bank presidents and cashiers.

[5] Reporters provided exhaustive discount rates for every existing bank in the United States and Canada.

An 1849 issue of Thompson's Bank Note Reporter , the most prominent of all bank note reporters. By 1855, it would achieve a circulation of 100,000. [ 1 ]
Bicknell's Counterfeit Detector , the third bank note reporter to be published overall, and the first outside of New York.
John Thompson's Autobiographical Counterfeit Detector consisted of facsimiles of the president and cashier of every bank in the United States.