$25 United States Savings Bond · Tacoma, Washington · PCGS Banknote 55 About Uncirculated
PERSONAL COLLECTION · NOT FOR SALE
THE ARTIFACT
A $25 Series E Bond Issued in November 1945
This Series E savings bond was registered to Lt. Fred E. Wells of Tacoma, Washington, with Mrs. Mary Phelps also named on the bond. Research has not yet established their identities with enough certainty to tell their personal story, so this exhibit focuses on what the artifact itself can document.
Actual bond from the Black Raven Personal Collection — front. One handwritten private identifier has been redacted; all other markings are preserved.Actual bond from the Black Raven Personal Collection — reverse.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Savings Bonds That Helped Finance a World War
Series E savings bonds became one of the most familiar ways ordinary Americans could lend money to the federal government during the World War II era. They were sold below face value: this $25 bond carried an issue price of $18.75 and was designed to reach its $25 value at maturity.
The face of this example is dated November 1945. That places it just after the formal end of World War II, when the enormous wartime savings-bond program was moving into the postwar period but remained part of American financial life. The bond therefore sits at an interesting transition point between wartime mobilization and the return to peacetime.
The later endorsements, bank stamps and cancellation marks are part of the artifact's history as well. They show that this was not merely a souvenir saved untouched: it remained a financial instrument for decades before being presented for payment. Those marks connect its original Tacoma registration with a later chapter in Washington State banking.
Even without a proven biography for the people named on it, the bond still preserves a remarkably personal record of how a national financing program reached an individual household in the Pacific Northwest.
