We Spent Thousands On Obsolete "Wildcat" Currency?!? Funny Money!! Legalized Robbery 150 Years Ago!!

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:30][music] Hey y'all. This is Caleb and Arman down here at the Gold Cove. And in this video, we just bought a crazy lot of currency. So, we just want to give some background information on it. And Arman knows a lot more knowledge than I do in this realm. So, I'm going to let Arman kick it off. So, Arman, what kind of currency did we buy in this interaction?

[00:00:58]So, we bought a whole bunch of uh obsolete currency, also known as wildcat currency. And it was basically money that uh different states and like cities back in the mid early mid 1800s um pretty much issued. So, like any little town or any little bank could issue their own money. And uh there's a whole bunch of really cool Michigan ones from between like 1820 about 1825 to like uh 1850s.

[00:01:29]Um really a lot of really cool stuff. A lot of cool designs and a lot of cool history.

[00:01:34]>> Are they backed by anything?

[00:01:36]>> No, >> they're not.

[00:01:37]>> No. Like they're um you didn't really have to uh have anything backing the money. like uh you could uh send an application in to the state and be like, "Hey, I'm a um I'mma back up the money with 20 acres of swamp land and they're like, "Okay, go ahead." Or like um you know, like very minimum like gold or silver.

[00:01:57]>> So pretty much they were like Ius.

[00:01:59]>> Yeah, very loosely for sure.

[00:02:01]>> Were they very easily to demand their uh the money out of it? Um actually, yeah, like they would um call it Wildcat uh because they would have the um banks that you could redeem it like very far away from any kind of um population um area. So like there's one bank that was pretty funny. The bank was uh was like the Bank of Udica or [music] New York. Um it was either Michigan, like the money was from Michigan, but you can only redeem it in New York. So, you had to travel three states away, which would have taken probably 6 months of traveling in the mid 1800s to redeem, you know, a$5 or $20 note >> from um the time. So, like they would just make it so hard to redeem and it was pretty much worthless and they could close up overnight and you'd have no recourse to uh your money.

[00:02:51]>> Wow. And you have some uh you have some to show us, right?

[00:02:55]>> Got a small uh sampling here.

[00:02:57]>> Small little sampling. a lot more in the video, but like here's one from like uh Carolina, South Carolina, this one Massachusetts, but lot of really cool um little designs, you know, like a nice vignet with uh different allegorical characters and a lot of um like it'll be like farming or like ship buildings and stuff. And usually they're blank too like they wouldn't have anything on the back.

[00:03:23]So it just be like on one side a lot of cool art and there's a lot of little bit of Confederate currency here too. Excuse me. And um pretty much the same thing. I mean Confederate currency was backed by nothing and you know that kind of became worthless pretty quickly. Um >> so this they only ran for a short period of time, right?

[00:03:44]>> Yeah. About 30 40 years like uh 18 most of them were between 1837 to 1865.

[00:03:52]And uh that's pretty much why uh the US government started making [music] US currency just around uh the civil war because this stuff was unregulated. And so they needed to >> offer a currency that was regulated by the US government, >> right?

[00:04:08]>> And so that's when you saw the first USbacked bank notes in like 1862.

[00:04:14]>> Wow. So pretty much anyone that own a bank back in the day can open up and pretty much divvy out their own currency.

[00:04:21]>> Yeah.

[00:04:22]>> Pretty crazy.

[00:04:23]>> Put their own name on it, write it off like, "Yep." And they could close it the next day and keep all your gold and silver and there was nothing you could do about it.

[00:04:31]>> Wow. So pretty much robbery essentially.

[00:04:34]>> Yeah. It was legalized robbery almost.

[00:04:37]>> Wow. Well, thank you, Arman, for giving us that information on that.

[00:04:40]>> I'm excited to see the giant lot of currency that we've bought in the video.

[00:04:44]Thank you, sir. Thank you.

[00:04:46]>> Stack all these nice builds.

[00:04:50]>> They have all these sweets.

[00:04:52]>> Yeah.

[00:04:53]>> Do you want these or No.

[00:04:55]>> Um, sure.

[00:04:56]>> Okay. I mean, I pay the 48 a piece for them.

[00:04:59]>> No.

[00:05:00]>> Okay.

[00:05:07][clears throat] >> So, were the You collected these? Um well >> essentially or no?

[00:05:14]>> I got them in a lot basically. So >> I do I do a lot of trade shows and I sell a lot of whatnot.

[00:05:22]>> So these were a lot of these came out from a whole lot.

[00:05:27]>> Okay, cool.

[00:05:31][snorts] >> 1820 some of them.

[00:05:33]>> You know what's funny is all of these literally meant nothing. It was just a promise >> to pay you.

[00:05:40]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:41]>> I mean And like same thing same thing with like currency today. But I mean, >> you know, if people take it and it has value, then >> I guess it has value.

[00:05:52]>> Yeah.

[00:05:53]>> Yeah. We get like the uh get a $3 bill.

[00:06:01]>> They got a 100 right there. Pretty cool.

[00:06:05]Got a bunch of graded ones here.

[00:06:08]What's really hot right now on the obsoletes is the uh contemporary counterfeits. I don't think I have any in here honestly, but the contemporary counterfeits are selling. What those are is at the time they counterfeited currency um to basically overthrow the Confederacy and to flood their economy with a bunch of fake money and you know stop them that way. And so at that time people were counterfeiting money in the 1800s.

[00:06:42]>> Yeah. So that's a cool that's a specimen note actually.

[00:06:44]>> Test note.

[00:06:45]>> Yeah. That's a test note.

[00:06:48]>> Check that out. It's got nothing on there. It's just got the portrait. It's really cool.

[00:06:54]>> Oh yeah.

[00:06:54]>> You don't see these too often, honestly.

[00:06:57]And these were basically just test runs to test the paper, test the quality, make sure that the prints were correct. So, you're selling these LF battery, am I right? Um, >> yeah, I wish.

[00:07:09]>> That'd be cool.

[00:07:12]It's >> like some good stuff.

[00:07:13]>> Yeah, honestly, it is. A lot of it has really good eye appeal. And like that's when when I picked this stuff out.

[00:07:19]>> Oh, we got to show that off on camera.

[00:07:21]Look at this one.

[00:07:21]>> Yeah, that one's really sweet.

[00:07:23]>> Michigan State Bank Detroit. Oh, yeah.

[00:07:27]And a 64, too.

[00:07:29]>> Gorgeous.

[00:07:29]>> That's actually a coupon. It's or it's uh >> it's like a reprint.

[00:07:34]>> Yeah, it's like a reprint.

[00:07:35]>> Yeah. Yeah. So uh souvenir card.

[00:07:38]>> Yeah. There you go.

[00:07:39]>> Still cool though.

[00:07:40]>> Oh yeah. These these reprints go for money still. I mean obviously got graded by >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It you know it just depends. People really buy them because they like what's on there and that's what I think when it comes down to obsoletes. People really care about like what's on there. And you know, a lot of people try to hunt stuff from their hometown.

[00:08:01]>> Mhm. Right.

[00:08:03]>> Like Michigan's going to be better here.

[00:08:04]>> That's a cool Pontiac one there.

[00:08:06]>> Yeah, that one's really cool. That's a cool local one.

[00:08:12]>> These things are gorgeous.

[00:08:15]>> You guys have to be very careful when you're buying because there are reprints. Now, we bought these knowing that they're reprints. This one got snuck into a lot, but this one we knew was a reprint when we bought it. And a good way to tell is just by gauging the paper. Yeah. So, a lot of this stuff feels like tissue paper. You feel that?

[00:08:35]>> It's like wax >> wax paper. That's the difference.

[00:08:38]>> And then if you take a um a little uh take a closer look at it, you can see like the inkjet dots. Like look at it under your uh loop.

[00:08:50]>> Yeah, your loop here.

[00:08:51]Yeah, you can see those little ink dots there >> on this one too.

[00:08:58]So, >> what do you think of this one? I know you're checking out this one right here.

[00:09:05]>> And these things still probably sell for a little bit of money even.

[00:09:08]>> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um I I I still sell them and whatnot. Like I sold a whole um page of these >> and uh obviously I let them know that it was a reprint and we sold it for super cheap. So, it I wouldn't expect it to like get any money or anything like that, like anything crazy, but you know, 15 20 bucks, 10 bucks here, >> right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:28]>> I think it's probably okay.

[00:09:30]>> Yeah. I think uh the staining is just weird on this one.

[00:09:34]>> Yeah.

[00:09:37]>> Just gorgeous, man. Sit here for hours going through them, >> right?

[00:09:44]>> I like all these old gnomes. They definitely had a lot better artwork back then than they do today. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:50]>> Today's paper is so boring.

[00:09:51]>> You know what's really cool is that um you can take the artwork off of uh all these notes and like obviously if you were to like put it under a scanner and stuff like that and like you can repurpose all of this artwork because it's uh I mean it's public domain at this point. It's so old that it's public domain. Okay. And >> so you could put it on like like I was at uh Central States and they were selling wine with um like a vignette on there was really cool.

[00:10:22]>> That's cool.

[00:10:23]>> It had the uh the $5 educational vignette >> and it was like the label of the wine and everything and like Yeah. So I looked into it a little bit and I'm like yeah. So all this stuff is public domain. Um, so if you really like some of these portraits, some of these vignettes on here, you can, you know, scan them, put them on a shirt or whatever and repurpose them. It's really cool. I mean, but these things on their own are just a great piece of history, >> right? [snorts] >> Like there's some in here. I think the earliest one is like 1807.

[00:10:57]>> I know. And a lot of these these were pretty much IUS like you said.

[00:11:00]>> Yeah. So that's how currency even started was I owe you five silver dollars coming to my house back home.

[00:11:07]>> Yeah, pretty much.

[00:11:09]>> Little little banks in each of the little towns and cities.

[00:11:11]>> Take a look at that. And the reason why they're so pretty and so beautiful was cuz you had to make them convincing, right?

[00:11:17]>> You know, >> like if you weren't going to take gold or silver, if you're going to take this, I mean, man, it had to look really convincing, right? And like imagine like at the time like something like this like having this in the 1800s like >> right >> a big biffold wallet and fast pocket shirt.

[00:11:34]>> It's all >> cool stuff. See I'm learning from this guy here. I don't even know all this >> as well. Yeah, it's a deep.

[00:11:42]>> Yeah. Yeah, it's it really is. Currency is really cool.

[00:11:47]>> How gorgeous. Well, thank you Julio.

[00:11:49]We'll definitely get a deal done here.

[00:11:51]>> Absolutely. Awesome.

[00:11:52]>> Awesome. Thank you, sir. Yeah.

[00:11:55]>> Thank you guys for watching our videos, subscribing to the channel, and liking our content. We are truly enjoying this journey on YouTube with all of you, and I hope you guys are as well. Be sure to be subscribed to the channel and notified on all of our content. And most importantly, buy precious metals. And don't forget to check out Cameron's whatnot called Gold Cove Cam on there.

[00:12:20]Things here are going way too cheap.

[00:12:22]It's exciting. It's fun. I'm on there.

[00:12:23]Pops is on there. Cams is on there. And yeah, don't forget to, you know, throw in some suggestions [music] in the comments down below of what you want to see or if you want to be on film, please also let us know. Take care everyone. We appreciate you all. Have a great day.