Silver certificate value and the Hawaii overprint note

The common silver certificates are the blue-seal $1 notes of Series 1935 and 1957, and CoinWeek's guide, updated 24 March 2024, puts those at under $5 circulated and up to a couple of hundred dollars in high grade. The money in this corner of the drawer is in the wartime notes: a Hawaii overprint, with brown seal, brown serial numbers and HAWAII across the back, printed in 1942 so that the whole issue could be declared worthless if the islands were occupied.

Every overprint price on this page is an auction result for a note that never circulated. For a Hawaii note that spent the war in somebody's pocket, the sources behind this page carry no figure at all.

Why the money in Hawaii got a brown seal

A dollar is spendable anywhere, and that is the problem an invasion would have handed the Treasury: the cash sitting in Honolulu would have gone on working for whoever took the islands. In 1942 the Bureau of Engraving and Printing received an order for special $1, $5, $10 and $20 notes overprinted "Hawaii", so that in the event of enemy occupation the overprinted currency could be declared worthless. That is the BEP's own account of it, in one sentence on its history page.

Governor Poindexter's regulations of 25 June 1942 ordered all US currency in Hawaii withdrawn and exchanged for "United States Currency, Hawaiian Series" by 15 July. From that date, holding other currency on the islands was prohibited; from 15 August, using any other paper money was illegal without a dispensation. The restrictions were revoked on 21 October 1944.

What was printed: Series 1935A $1 silver certificates and Series 1934 and 1934A $5, $10 and $20 Federal Reserve Notes from the San Francisco district, all carrying the Julian and Morgenthau signatures. HAWAII appears in boldface type at each end of the face and in large open letters across the back. The seal and the serial numbers are brown.

Afterwards the surplus was destroyed. By 5 November 1945 some $200 million of face value had been burned, in a crematorium and in the furnaces of the Aiea sugar mill.

How many Hawaii notes were printed

CoinWeek puts the whole issue at about 65 million notes and roughly $400 million of face value, and the four runs above sum to 66,138,000. One correction while we are here: that same CoinWeek article gives the $20 run as "approximately 950,000", which cannot be right, since at 950,000 the four runs would fall some ten million notes and $200 million of face value short of its own totals. The figure in the table is Wikipedia's, and it reconciles.

The $1 is the commonest Hawaii note by a distance, and its star notes are the scarce part of it.

What Hawaii notes have actually sold for

These are auction results, every one of them for a note in or near perfect condition: uncirculated, which means never folded, and sealed in a grading service's holder. The PPQ and EPQ after some of the grades say the paper is original, never pressed, washed or repaired. The prices are CoinWeek's, from its Hawaii guide of 24 September 2025. The date on the $10 star row comes from Heritage's own lot page, because the guide misprints the year as 2007.

Read the grades before the prices: every row above is a note that was never folded. Anyone quoting you a four-figure sum off a photograph is quoting the top of this table at a note that is not in it.

The mules and the stars, and how to tell

Mules. Some Hawaii notes were printed from face and back plates belonging to different series, so the plate numbers on the two sides are different sizes. Collectors call these mules and they carry a premium over the ordinary printing. Grading services label them "Mule" on the holder, which is the practical way to know. The $5 star mule in the table, PMG 66 EPQ, made $52,800 at Stack's Bowers on 23 March 2023; the same note had sold as a PCGS 65 PPQ for $32,900 at Heritage on 28 April 2017.

Stars. A star in place of the suffix letter means the note replaced one spoiled at the factory, and the Hawaii issue has its own, 204,000 on the $1 and 54,500 on the $20. The highest price in the table is one of them. How replacement notes work covers the star in general.

Short snorters. Hawaii and other wartime notes signed by servicemen, sometimes taped end to end into a strip and kept as a keepsake. Our sources carry no sale figure for them. The signatures are what make it a short snorter, and a grader notes on the holder when paper has been washed.

The faked overprints

"Why did someone stamp Hawaii on this note?" is a question people ask about notes they own, and the answer is often that somebody did exactly that, later, to a common note. The overprint is bold and unmistakable, and stamping one on an ordinary note takes very little, which is the whole reason fakes exist. Three checks:

• Seal and serial color. Brown on a genuine one. A green or blue seal under a HAWAII overprint is not a Hawaii note.
• The series. Series 1935A on the $1, Series 1934 or 1934A on the $5, $10 and $20.
• The district. The $5, $10 and $20 are San Francisco notes, district L.

The North Africa yellow seals

The same idea was applied to Operation Torch. From November 1942 silver certificates with a bright yellow seal instead of the usual blue were issued in $1, $5 and $10 for US forces in North Africa, identifiable for the same reason and repudiable in the same way. The March 1944 Federal Reserve Bulletin, quoted by CoinWeek, said the Hawaii advantages "could have been achieved by the use of the yellow seal currency used in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy", which is where those notes went.

We have no sourced price for a yellow seal, so this page does not print one. That record sits with the auction houses and with a current price guide.

The red R and S notes, a paper test that went wrong

The other wartime experiment is quieter and easier to miss. In 1944 the government tested a new paper for banknotes: 1,184,000 Series 1935A $1 silver certificates were printed on the regular paper and overprinted with a red R, and 1,184,000 on the experimental paper and overprinted with a red S, all released on 20 June 1944. Together they are less than 1% of Series 1935A, and CoinWeek's headline on the episode calls it a failed paper test.

How to tell one: a large red R or S at the lower right of the face. Genuine non-star R notes fall in the serial range S70884001C to S72068000C and S notes in S73884001C to S75068000C, which is what the published ranges are for: a real one sits inside them. A star in the serial makes an R or S note scarcer again, and the one that came up at auction is covered with the star notes.

Silver certificates, and what they are worth now

A silver certificate was a note the Treasury issued against silver it held. The first ones came in 1878; small-size notes were printed from 1928 to 1964. Series 1928 notes promise "X silver dollar(s)"; from Series 1934 the wording is "X dollars in silver". 1957 is the last series date that appears on one, and some 1935-dated $1 notes were released as late as 1963. The date on the face tracks the design, and its suffix letter the signatures, so a 1935-dated note could still be handed across a counter in 1963.

Redemption ended in two steps. In 1964 Treasury Secretary Dillon stopped exchanging them for silver dollars; until 24 June 1968 they could be redeemed for silver granules; since then they are redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes. They remain legal tender, so a $1 silver certificate is always worth at least a dollar.

MS63 in the table below is a mint-state grade: a note that never circulated.

If it is the silver you were after, the coins are where it went: US dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 or earlier are 90% silver. Which US coins are silver has the dates and the melt calculator does the arithmetic at today's spot price.

The seal colors, in one table

Color sorts this whole category in one glance.

What people get wrong

• "I can still exchange it for silver." Not since 1964 for silver dollars and 1968 for granules. What you hold is a collectible and a dollar.
• "The series year is when it was printed." It is not, and 1935-dated notes released in 1963 are the proof.
• "Hawaii notes only circulated in Hawaii." Troops on Midway were paid in them, they turned up on the mainland through the 1940s and 1950s, and the Navy was still paying overseas vendors with them in the 1960s.
• "Old notes are not money any more." The BEP's own FAQ says there will be no recall or devaluation of older-series notes, and United States Notes are redeemable at face value.
• "Every old blue seal is a rarity." The Series 1935 and 1957 $1 certificates are the common ones, and CoinWeek puts them under $5 circulated.

Before you decide anything

Read the condition honestly, because on notes this old the grade multiplies everything else, and then stop handling it. A note that might be worth hundreds is settled by a person holding it, at a grading service or over a dealer's counter. Nothing valuable is confirmed from a photograph, and pressing a fold out or taping an edge costs more than the damage did.

Buck is our own app, so read this as what it is: photograph one note, front and then back, on iPhone or Android, and it names the series and shows what a price guide carries for that type, which is a range where the guide has one and nothing at all where it does not. It cannot grade paper, and on a Hawaii overprint the grade is most of the money.

What this article is based on: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's history page for the 1942 order and the first silver certificates, and its currency FAQs for the United States Notes and the no-recall answer; CoinWeek for the Hawaii overprints and their auction results, silver certificates and what they are worth, the small-size series, the red R dollar, the 1928 $10 gold certificate star and the Series 1953 red seals; and Wikipedia on the Hawaii overprint note for the print runs and star counts, on the silver certificate for the redemption dates, and on the one-dollar bill for the R and S serial ranges. All read on 21 September 2026.