Description and research notes
This specimen represents an official municipal tax anticipation note issued by the City of Asbury Park, New Jersey, dated March 31, 1934, and denominated Ten Dollars. Explicitly titled TAX ANTICIPATION NOTE OF 1934 and further identified on the design as a RECOVERY BOND, the instrument belongs to a class of short-term municipal obligations created during the most acute phase of the Great Depression, when local governments faced severe cash shortages and collapsing revenue streams.
Tax anticipation notes were not emergency substitutes or informal scrip, but legally sanctioned debt instruments issued in advance of expected tax receipts. In early 1934, municipalities such as Asbury Park were compelled to monetize future tax income in order to meet immediate operating expenses, maintain essential services, and avoid default. This note was issued pursuant to Chapter 192 of the Laws of 1917 of the State of New Jersey, as amended, anchoring it firmly within an established statutory framework rather than ad hoc crisis improvisation.
The engraved legal text states that the City of Asbury Park, a municipal corporation of the State of New Jersey, for value received acknowledges itself indebted and promises to pay to bearer the sum of Ten Dollars. The note was issued at the office of the City Treasurer and does not bear interest prior to maturity, a feature typical of short-term anticipation instruments designed to circulate or be redeemed quickly upon receipt of tax revenues. The note is expressly acceptable in payment for and discharge of any taxes thereafter payable to the city, reinforcing its role as a bridge between municipal obligation and taxpayer settlement.
The text further certifies that the total amount authorized to be borrowed by the city through tax anticipation notes under the governing statute was three hundred sixty thousand dollars, and that the amount outstanding, including this issue, did not exceed that statutory ceiling. It also affirms compliance with all constitutional and statutory debt limitations, a declaration intended to reassure holders at a time when municipal insolvency was a real and widely feared risk.
The obverse is executed in black engraved security printing by E. A. Wright Bank Note Company of Philadelphia, a prominent American security printer of municipal and financial instruments. The design features bold municipal titling, denomination counters marked TEN, and a large engraved corporate seal of Asbury Park, projecting institutional authority and legal legitimacy at a moment when public confidence in municipal finance was deeply strained. The serial number C0000 and the overprinted word SPECIMEN identify this example as a printer-issued specimen, produced for authorization, approval, or archival reference rather than for circulation.
The reverse carries an engraved panoramic vignette of the Asbury Park waterfront and boardwalk, visually anchoring the obligation to the city’s economic identity as a coastal resort municipality. The prominent inclusion of the words RECOVERY BOND underscores the political and fiscal messaging embedded in the instrument: this was not merely a debt note, but a declared tool of municipal recovery during a period of national economic collapse.
Specimen examples of tax anticipation notes were produced in extremely limited quantities and were typically retained only briefly within printer or municipal files once an issue was authorized. Unlike issued notes, which were redeemed, cancelled, and destroyed in the normal course of fiscal operations, specimens had no functional role and survived only by circumstance.
No other specimen example of this City of Asbury Park Ten Dollars Tax Anticipation Note of 1934 is documented in institutional collections, auction records, certification census data, or standard reference literature. Based strictly on observed and recorded evidence, this piece stands as a unique surviving specimen and serves as a definitive documentary artifact of Depression-era municipal finance and recovery policy in the United States.