Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US black/campus/Und., also alligator skin, fish-skin, froggyskin) a banknote, $1 bill.

1899		Boston Globe (MA) 23 Apr. 19/8: [advert] It’s a lead pipe that you’ll pull the wrapper off your roll of frogskins and leave it at the box office.
1900		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 23 June 11/4: They each have a fondness for the old frogskins, and [...] hang on to anything in the shap e of ‘dough.
1902		Ade Girl Proposition 104: Although his Salary didn’t make him round-shouldered taking it Home, he was enabled to soak a couple of Frog Skins each Month.
1920		H. Wiley Wildcat 156: Whang! An’ Ah reads six. Frogskin money you gits a furlough.
c.1930		(ref. to 1898) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 282: I took the frogskins and said, ‘That’s on account’.
1936		(ref. to 1918) L. Duncan Over the Wall 21: I learned quickly that a dollar bill was a fish-skin.
1938		P. Grey ‘’Twixt Night ’n’ Dawn’ in Afro-American (Baltimore, MD) 10 Sept. 10/3: He managed to squeeze a couple of frog skins out of J.N.F.
1941		Philadelphia Enquirer (PA) 19 Oct. 102/3: Pay day in camp is ‘Uncle Sam’s party’ when frogskins [...] are paid out.
1947–53		W. Guthrie Seeds of Man (1995) 320: Fork th’ froggyskin.
1949		‘Hal Ellson’ Duke 68: I pulled the score by myself. I was gone about an hour and when I came back I got fistfuls of alligator skins. I got more money than John D and Henry Ford.
1955		H. Braddy ‘Narcotic Argot Along the Mexican Border’ in AS XXX:2 87: FROGSKINS, n. Paper money.
1960		(con. 1940s) G. Morrill Dark Sea Running 29: One frogskin—let’s have it.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 65: Some broad is going to lay out five hundred frog skins to get her rocks off.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 13: We got five hundred frog skins.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 163: She’d probably ask me to slip her 50 frogskins a month. [Ibid.] 165: The publisher owed Pathé 50 fishskins.

2. (US Und.) a counterfeit dollar bill.

1926

Flynn’s 16 Jan. n.p.: I had [...] cached about two hundred grand – toad and frog skins, for I never monkeyed with the iron men [DU].

3. (Aus.) a £1 note.

1928		Western Mail (Perth) 17 May 26/2: Frogskin, a slang expression for a pound note.
1929		Cairns Post (Qld) 4 Jan. 9/3: the green ‘frogskin’ or one pound note.
1936		‘Banjo’ Paterson Shearer’s Colt 15: If that bag full of frogskins [pound notes] was burnt in the fire, they’d be some of the iron frame of the bag left, wouldn’t there?
1940		Advocate (Burnie, Tas.) 8 Apr. 8/2: Not more than half a frogskin to call your own.
1949		R. Park Poor Man’s Orange 102: ‘How much do they sting yer for it?’ ‘Half a frog.’.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 231/2: carpet (cracker, frog, frogskin) a one – pound note.