As the name suggests, a silver ticket is a kind of bill that replaces silver taels and circulates in the market, and it can also be said to be a kind of paper money.

The history of silver bills can be traced back to the early Northern Song Dynasty, when there was a special cash custody business in Sichuan "silver ticket shop", that is, the depositor delivered the cash to the shop, and the shop temporarily filled in the amount of cash deposited by the depositor on the roll made of paper, and then returned to the depositor, when the depositor withdrew cash, the interest paid to the shop owner for every 30 wen, that is, the custody fee of 3% was paid.

This kind of paper coupon that temporarily fills in the deposit amount is the earliest "silver ticket", of course, this kind of "silver ticket" is only a deposit and withdrawal voucher, not a currency in the market.

Later, with the development of the commodity economy, the use of "silver tickets" is becoming more and more extensive, many merchants jointly set up a monopoly on the issuance and exchange of "Jiaozi" silver ticket shops, and set up silver ticket branches in various places, large transactions between merchants, in order to avoid the trouble of coinage and handling, directly use the "silver ticket" that can be turned into cash at any time to pay for the goods is also increasing.

Later, the silver ticket shops found that only using part of the deposit would not endanger the credibility of the "silver bill", so they began to print the "silver bill" with a uniform denomination and format and issued it to the market as a new means of circulation, and the "silver bill" really developed into a currency that could be circulated in the market.

Why did silver tickets appear in the early Northern Song Dynasty?

Because the commodity economy of the Song Dynasty developed rapidly, more currency was needed in commodity circulation, and at that time, there was a shortage of precious metals such as gold, silver and copper, which could not meet the demand for circulation.

At the beginning, the Northern Song Dynasty court had no way but to mint iron coins to ensure the circulation demand, at that time, ten iron coins can be worth a copper coin, and a piece of cloth needs copper coins twice, that is, 20,000 iron coins, the weight of 20,000 iron coins is five or six hundred catties, pulling a cart of iron coins to buy a piece of cloth is the status quo at that time, this transaction method is extremely inconvenient, so it objectively contributed to the emergence of light currency silver tickets.

In the first year of Song Renzong's Tiansheng, the Northern Song Dynasty court set up Yizhou silver ticketing, which was supervised by officials in Beijing to preside over the issuance of silver tickets, and the official silver tickets were officially launched.

The issuance of silver tickets in the Northern Song Dynasty was still quite standardized, so it was widely used, until the first year of the Song Dynasty Huizong Daguan, the Northern Song Dynasty court changed the silver ticket to the money citation, so that the currency and the principal were separated, and the arbitrary additional issuance, which caused the silver ticket or the value of the money to fall sharply, and at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the value of the money quotation of 1,000 Wen was less than 100 Wen.

In the Yuan Dynasty, the silver ticket system was more perfect, the main currency of the Yuan Dynasty was the silver ticket, and even the "Marco Polo Chronicles" detailed the printing process and circulation of the silver ticket in the Yuan Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty also issued silver bills or paper money, and in the early Ming Dynasty, Hongwu issued a treasure note to replace copper coins in the eighth year, and the reason was also due to the lack of copper at that time.

The denomination of the treasure banknote issued in the eighth year of Hongwu is consistent, that is, 1,000 Wen, and the price of rice at that time is the consistent treasure banknote of one stone of rice.

In the 22nd year of Hongwu, the Ming Dynasty issued additional denominations of treasure banknotes of Shiwen, Ershiwen, Sanshiwen, Shiwen, and Wu Shiwen, and at this time, because the issuance of treasure banknotes did not set up reserves, they could be issued as they wanted, resulting in a serious depreciation of treasure banknotes.

By the fifth year of Yongle, one stone of rice has risen to 30 yuan of treasure banknotes, that is to say, the value of treasure banknotes has depreciated 30 times in 20 years!

By the seventh year of Xuande, the treasure banknote has always been only worth five copper coins, that is to say, the treasure banknote has depreciated two hundred times in 50 years!

By the ninth year of orthodoxy, the price of a stone of rice has exceeded 100 yuan of treasure banknotes, and the treasure banknotes have become impassable.

By the Zhengde period, the treasure banknote had actually been abolished, and the Ming court no longer issued paper money.

This is the farce of the Ming Dynasty issuing banknotes, completely ignoring the law of economic development, wanton issuance, it only took more than a hundred years to make the imperial court credit bankrupt, and the people do not recognize the treasure money!

Zhang Bin looked at the record of the Ming treasure banknote in front of him, and couldn't help frowning, in Daming, the credit of the banknote has long been destroyed by the imperial court, and he will issue silver bills again, will anyone buy it?

After thinking about it for a long time, he decided to make a bold attempt, step by step, and slowly restore the credibility of the banknotes.

He knew that silver bills were actually very promising, or rather, that it was a trend for paper money to replace metal money.

At this time, the transaction between large merchants has risen to the level of tens of thousands of taels or even hundreds of thousands of taels, what is the concept of hundreds of thousands of taels, not to mention the difference between ten taels and one catty, simple conversion, one hundred thousand taels is ten thousand catties, ten thousand catties of silver, at least a few carriages to pull the move, pulling several carts or even dozens of carts to do business, the degree of trouble can be imagined.

If it is a business in the same city, it is fine, if it is a different place, across several state capitals, or even across several provinces, it is very unsafe to carry several cars or even dozens of cars of silver, anti-banditry, anti-thief, that is only one aspect, sometimes, even their own people have to be guarded against, because hundreds of thousands of taels of silver are enough to make people crazy, once the silver is robbed, there is nothing, sometimes even the life is hit!

Therefore, in any case, now there is a demand for silver bills by large merchants around the country, and the demand is very urgent, which is the basis for restoring the credibility of paper money, as long as the merchants of the major merchants use the silver tickets issued by the East Prosperity Hall, the people's confidence in the silver bills will slowly recover, and when the time comes, the silver bills will become the currency in circulation.

The issuance of silver tickets, in addition to the problem of reputation, the most important thing is the problem of anti-counterfeiting, you don't print randomly, people imitate you, catch a random print, then it is not a matter of reputation, the entire Dongshengtang will even go bankrupt because of this.

Therefore, the first thing to solve in the issuance of silver tickets is to solve the problem of anti-counterfeiting, for this reason, Zhang Bin specially mobilized more than ten loyal and honest printers in Fuguang, and moved them all to Dayuan City, specially placed in a large mansion, and discussed with them the anti-counterfeiting of silver coins.

Now, he, the governor, is more weird, he doesn't care about business, he mixes with more than ten printers all day long, and he doesn't know what he's busy with.

At this time, few people really knew what he was busy with, because these more than ten printers were supervised by him, and even he issued a gag order, strictly prohibiting them from talking to anyone about the development of silver tickets, once discovered, they were greeted by disappearing forever!

For the anti-counterfeiting of banknotes, Zhang Bin still has some experience, although he has not made banknotes, the banknotes of later generations have seen more, and various anti-counterfeiting methods are also understood, so it is not difficult to design a silver ticket.

There are many ways to prevent counterfeiting of banknotes, combined with the level of printing and papermaking technology in the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Bin selected several.

First of all, paper, paper must be special, with special paper is enough to stump more than ninety percent of counterfeiters, as long as the market can not buy special paper to print silver tickets, the vast majority of counterfeiters have to kneel, paper can not be bought, what else to imitate?

After consulting more than a dozen printers, he settled on a paper that was not available on the market at all, and only one or two of these printers had seen it.

Generally, paper is made of straw, wheat straw and other raw materials, the cost is low, a hundred pieces of one-foot manuscript paper is only a few cents, this is a commonly used paper for printing, there is no flexibility, a tear will be opened, and it is not wear-resistant.

A better paper is made of bark, the cost is relatively high, a hundred pieces of one-foot paper are cheap to a few points, expensive to a few taels, this kind of paper is generally used as the cover of high-end books, the flexibility is already quite good, it takes a little effort to tear apart, and it is more wear-resistant.

The most expensive paper is made of cotton wool, the cost is quite high, much higher than the cloth, because the cloth is directly woven with the yarn made of cotton wool, and the cotton wool is equivalent to being completely utilized, and if the paper is made of cotton wool, at least half of the dregs must be boiled, and only the treated cotton fibers are used.

This kind of paper is quite flexible, it is also relatively difficult to tear, it is quite wear-resistant, and the whiteness is relatively high, without adding any brightener, it is naturally white, and the adsorption of printing pigments is quite good.

However, this kind of paper is expensive, the poor ones are a few cents a piece, and the good ones even need one or two sheets, and generally only the people with special money will make special orders for special purposes, and there are not many craftsmen who can make this kind of paper.

To make silver tickets, what you want is this kind of paper, the cost is expensive, and it doesn't matter if you have one or two, because the first batch of silver tickets that Zhang Bin is going to make are all one hundred taels, and the length is less than half a foot, and a foot of paper can make several silver tickets, and the cost of papermaking is nothing at all.

So, he transferred a few experienced papermakers, all of whom were concentrated in Dayuancheng, and let them specialize in the production of paper for silver tickets.

The problem of paper is solved, and then there is engraving and printing technology, although this is not a unique technology, there are many anti-counterfeiting elements that can be added, such as special complex patterns, such as multi-layer color printing, such as double-sided printing and so on.

Zhang Bin also decided to use a special copper plate to engrave, so that the printing has a concave and convex feeling, and you can also apply a precision mold to make the printed pattern more precise, and it is more durable, unlike the woodblock printing and printing and printing, and the lines are consistent.

Finally, he also made a unique barcode number, the front is the Arabic numerals, the reverse side is the corresponding barcode, this is completely a later thing, the average person does not understand what this is at all, and the number code also has a certain rule, the average person will not know what these numbers mean.

He is also not prepared to teach the identification method of barcodes to too many people, limited to the big treasurers in various regions and their suffocating relatives, and outsiders absolutely do not teach them, and they are strictly forbidden to teach outsiders.

After secretly preparing for nearly a month, the first batch of 100 taels of silver tickets could finally be printed, and Zhang Bin specially summoned the big shopkeepers in several nearby areas and began to train them on how to identify the authenticity of the silver tickets.

Or those who are closer to the east and can be contacted by the clippers, that is:

Fujian and Jiangxi are in charge of the big treasurer Huang Peng;

Guangdong and Guangxi are in charge of the big treasurer Huang Cheng;

Cao Huachun, the chief treasurer of Nanzhili and Zhejiang;

Cao Huayu, the big treasurer of Beizhili and Shandong;

Dongying and North Korea's big treasurer Zheng Zhiju.

The reason why only these big shopkeepers are recruited is not only because they can quickly arrive by clipper, but also because these places are basically the most developed areas of Daming's commercial and trade activities, and most of the top ten merchant gangs are concentrated in these areas, and these areas can also be transferred by clipper to transfer silver taels, so there is no need to worry about running or no silver taels.

These big shopkeepers originally heard Zhang Bin say that they wanted to develop the task of silver tickets, but they didn't expect it to be carried out so soon, in their minds, at least the Ming Dynasty, the three capitals and thirteen provinces, and even the state capital and county have the branch of Dongshengtang, and the business of silver ticket exchange can be carried out.

Zhang Bin didn't explain so much to them, because he was going to gather the helmsmen of the major merchant gangs to publicize the silver ticket of Dongshengtang, and he would have to explain it in detail at that time, and it would be a bit of a waste of effort to explain to them at this time, so it would be better to explain it together at that time.

Within a few days, the five big treasurers of Dongshengtang were almost trained, and the first batch of silver tickets was printed, Zhang Bin directly summoned the helmsmen of the four major business gangs to gather in Fuzhou to publicize the relevant matters related to the issuance of Dongshengtang silver tickets.

Longyou Business Gang, Ningbo Business Gang, Huizhou Business Gang, Jiangxi Business Gang, the helmsman of the four major business gangs gathered again in Fuzhou's Moon Tower, at this time their mood has been very different, last time was Zhang Bin organized fundraising, everyone believed that he was the governor of Fujian, and took a certain risk to donate hundreds of thousands of taels.

And this time, Zhang Bin has been promoted to the governor of Fuguang, the Yuegang mutual market promised to them has already been opened, and they have made a lot of money, and the Zhuhai mutual market has also been opened, and the major business gangs have made great progress, it can be said that doubling profits in a year is considered to be less profitable, and many of them have increased their assets tenfold in the past few years!

It is precisely because of Zhang Bin's support that they can have today, they naturally have a lot of trust in Zhang Bin, as soon as Zhang Bin is called, these helmsmen immediately rushed over, as if they were afraid that they would suffer if they ran slowly!

In the Moon Tower, Zhang Bin looked at these familiar figures, and sighed in his heart, although these people made a lot of money with themselves, but it was precisely because of their unconditional trust in themselves that they raised the first amount of military spending, thus recovering all the pirates near Fujian, recovering Dongfan, and breaking out of the sky.

These people should thank him, and he should also thank these people, he couldn't help but stand up, raised his glass and said loudly: "Everyone, thank you for your trust in this official, whether it is in the past or now, everyone's trust in this official, this official is in mind, come, I give you a glass." ”

The helmsmen of the major merchant gangs hurriedly stood up, also with a burst of gratitude.

After drinking a full cup, Zhang Bin said directly: "This time I recruited everyone, mainly to announce a major event, this matter must have been heard of by everyone, this major event is that Dongshengtang is ready to issue silver tickets!" ”