A Guide Book of Southern States Currency by Criswell, Q. David (FWD) Bowers (2006, Hardcover, Spiral)

The "Official Red Book - A Guide Book of Southern States Currency is written on the building blocks set by Colonel Grover Criswell. Paper currency expert Hugh Shull is nearly successful in presenting an authoritative guide to the state-issued money of the South, from the pre-Civil War era through the war years, and into the late 1800's. It features a foreword by Q. David Bowers and illustrations are predominately from the collection of Gene D. Mintz.


The book is very well done. The illustrations are large, they are in color, easy to read and the variants are listed in a manner easy to follow and understand. One of the best thing about this book I found is if the note had an illustrated back, the back of the note was photographed and included as well, unlike other books which might only describe the note the as having a "bright blue back with the denomination written in letters" or some other vague reference.

Most, if not all the notes for the majority of the Southern States were covered in good detail, and I found it to be an nice piece of work with the following exclusions. Every southern state with the exception of Virginia was adequately covered. In fact, Virginia was barely covered at all. This was a BIG DISAPPOINTMENT as a great many Civil War era notes - and the majority of the most common ones were issued by Virginia. These notes were not presented at all! This is MAJOR OMISSION that would have turned a "NICE" piece of Work into an IMPRESSIVE PIECE of work. The fact this entire section was omitted made an otherwise outstanding guide fall flat on its face and turn it into just another inadequately incomplete reference book.

Another major flaw was in the cataloging of the items themselves. The writer uses CR numbers; however, they are duplicated for each state. In other words there is no definitive currency or note that is specifically related to one single number. A note from Texas will have the same CR number as a note from Arkansas. For example a CR 1 note in Arkansas is for an Arkansas Treasury Warrant with an rarity rating of 10. The same CR 1 number is used in Texas notes as well and is for an 1862 Treasury Warrant for that state and has a rarity of 4. There are no separators as to what CR 1 really means. This problem could have been solved by simply starting alphabetically by state and the assigning of chronological reference numbers, such as “CR1”, “CR2”, etc., for each note that followed . So doing would have simplified the catalog process and would have created a second meaningful descriptive number when referencing a particular note type similar to the "T series" system currently used for Confederate Currency identification.

Overall the appearance of the book and the information it contained was very good and it is a valuable resource for everything but Virginia notes - a real sore spot for me - and shouldn't be overlooked simply because it lacks this. However if you want it for Civil War note identification only then you might be wasting your time and money and should pass as they aren't all covered. Hopefully, the publisher and writer will see the folly of their way and include this section into future editions and put in a corrected description in current editions until it is included because this book DOES NOT ACTUALLY COVER ALL THE SOUTHERN STATE CURRENCY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED A TRUE GUIDE UNTIL IT DOES.