Since the beginning of modern banking, financial transactions have been recorded on checks and notes and various other types of paper documents. Besides the obvious transfer of money between two parties, there is another easily overlooked, aspect to these important pieces of paper. They have an artistic and historical value that can be, at times, even more valuable than the financial record. In this article we'll take a look at the value of artistic checks and see how it has changed over time.

Artistic Checks in History

Money and art have been intertwined since the beginning of time. Every major culture has commissioned artists to decorate money and financial records such as bonds, coins, notes and checks.

An excellent example would be the famous check used by the United States to pay Russia for the purchase of the state of Alaska in 1869. Featuring two stunning hand cut lithographs this artistic check is now a valuable piece of history in it's own right. It's doubtful whether any of our modern electronic fund transfers will be as useful in providing such a beautiful glimpse of history.

Increased Perceived Value with Art on Checks

Artistic checks also serve a need beyond pure decoration. Art imbues value into the financial record process. Can you imagine a simple blank piece of paper serving as a bank check? It simply wouldn't express the perceived value that check needs to instill confidence.

It has been a long time since governments and banks created money and checks that had any real value. Therefore, artwork and symbols are used to create a sense of trust in the value of the person or country backing the check or note.

Artistic Checks offer Higher Security

Our current artistic checks take the combination of decoration and security to new levels with all sorts of embedded features like watermarks, holograms and micro printing. All three of these methods have been developed to make checks much more difficult to counterfeit, thereby reducing fraud.

1. A watermark or other semi-transparent marks which only become visible if the check is held up to the light. They are specially created by an artist so they will not be reproduced easily if the check is copied.

2. Holograms are little images etched into metallic foil. They contain what appears to be an artistic 3-D picture which is visible only when held at a certain angle.

3. The third technique is micro printing. A special check inking technique that embeds words that are invisible to the naked eye into the lines that make up the images on an artistic check. These words cannot be read without the use of a magnifying glass.

Current Day Artistic Checks

In the last few years, check styles have begun to transcend bank sponsored security prevention markings to the realm of personal expression. Now everyone can create a style of artistic checks which suits their personality and interests. There are companies that specialize in the production of artistic checks, purely to give consumers the choice of thousands of ways to express their personality and interests on their bank checks.

I hope this article has provided a new view into the rich history and the value of the artistic checks beyond the simple exchange of funds between two people's bank accounts. They provide a look at the society of their time and even into the personal style and interests of the issuer.