A proof specimen bank note never issued from Burlington, Vermont, is among the featured items in the next Archives International Auctions public auction on Feb. 23. The sale will be held at the firm’s office in River Edge, New Jersey.

The 1830s-era $20 note was printed in New York by Durand, Perkins & Co. for the Bank of Burlington. It is printed in black ink on India paper and displays three vignettes reflective of the area — a woman seated holding a sword and scale, a lion to her left, and a steamboat in background; sheaves of wheat; and a Native American paddling a canoe. This note only exists as proofs. The example in the auction was given a grade of Choice About Uncirculated 58 by Paper Money Guaranty.

The early residents of Vermont liked neither banks nor paper money, says William S. Rann in History of Chittenden County, Vermont (1886), and the bank of Burlington was not incorporated until Nov. 9, 1818, six years after the Burlington branch of the Vermont State Bank moved out of the city. The bank then played an influential role for close to 50 years, until it began winding up its affairs in 1865 to become one of the state’s first national banks, as the First National Bank of Burlington, with the same officers. It was absorbed by the Merchant’s National Bank in 1870.

Among other more interesting items in the 732-lot sale is a superb Commercial and Industrial Bank of Mongolia 3-tugrik specimen note from 1941.

Another is a March 20, 1862, $1,000 City of New Orleans 6% coupon bond issued under Confederate control a little more than a month before the city was captured by the Union Navy. It was issued in an attempt to create funds for the war effort.

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