Everyone is pinching pennies lately. State governments are looking for ways to make a dollar stretch – even if that dollar is state-issued and from the 1800s.

South Carolina’s Department of Archives and History has a large amount of state-issue bank notes from the Civil War era. These bills have been placed on eBay and similar sites and are selling for up to 12 times their original value.  (Read more in the Greenville Online article State Auctions Civil War-Era Money.)

Under state law, the proceeds of the sales go towards state programs that deal with the preservation of historical documents.

The bank notes hadn’t lost all of their value after the war, but they had considerably declined in worth. After the public redeemed the low-value notes, at a great loss, they sat dormant in the basement of the Statehouse until the 1960s.

See a collection of paper bills and read more about the history of the State Bank of South Carolina.

View our guide of modern-day SC banks.