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1 Dollar
| Issuer | Bank of Poyais |
|---|---|
| Year | 1828 (1821-1837) |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Intaglio-printed note in black on white paper with a vertical guilloche panel at left bearing the 'BANK OF POYAIS' legend. Upper register carries two oval cartouches inscribed 'ONE DOLLAR' and 'BANK OF POYAIS', flanking a central heraldic vignette. The body text, rendered in copperplate cursive, carries a promise to pay one hard dollar, signed by authority of Gregor, Cazique of Poyais, with ruled lines for Manager and Accountant. |
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| Reverse description | Unprinted reverse, showing only the blind embossed impression of the obverse intaglio work visible as a mirror image through the thin paper stock. |
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| Comments |
Poyais was a fictional country. Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish soldier of fortune who had fought under Bolívar, fabricated the entire territory — complete with a capital city, a constitution, and a functioning land-grant economy — and sold it to British investors and settlers beginning in 1822. The Bank of Poyais was as real as its issuing nation, which is to say not at all. W.H. Lizars of Edinburgh printed these notes in good faith, producing work of the technical quality expected for a legitimate colonial bank.
Over 200 settlers sailed for the Mosquito Coast of present-day Honduras in 1822–23 expecting a prosperous colony. They found jungle. Dozens died. The fraud collapsed publicly, yet MacGregor somehow evaded prosecution in Britain and attempted a near-identical scheme in France in 1825.
These notes never purchased a single transaction in any real economy — they are documents of one of history's more audacious confidence frauds, engraved by William Home Lizars, who also engraved Audubon's first plates for Birds of America.