Innehållsförteckning för February 2019 från Banknote Reporter

Spink China welcomed 2019 with more than the average bang! Their Jan. 4-5 sale demonstrated that the Chinese paper market is not only alive and well but positively thriving in Hong Kong. Paper money lots were split across three catalogs: Chinese bank notes, World & Macau, China and Hong Kong. The top-selling lot was the Big Roman: a Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China $500 false color specimen dated 1 August 1930 (P-58cs). No issued notes are known extant, and specimens are rarely seen. In November 1996, Spink hammered another example for HKD230,000. That on offer was in a superior PMG 64 Choice Uncirculated and raced away from its HKD350,000-400,000 estimate to take HKD936,000 [USD119,465]. Not far behind came an issued Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation $50 of…

Lot 40260 in the Stack’s Bowers August 2015 ANA sale was the newly discovered $20 Original Series proof shown here for The First National Bank of Philadelphia, the first bank chartered in the country. All Original Series proofs are rare, but this one has particular charm being from the nation’s first national bank. It also is one of my favorites owing to a peculiar ad hoc engraving feature that I will describe. It was not printed from a 10-10-10-20 plate combination, which became a standardized combination. Instead, it was the top subject from a 20-20-50-100 plate. That fact makes it more significant to me. The 20-20-50-100 plates represented an exotic combination, yet even so 38 banks received notes from them during the Original and 1875 series. You can find all…

Dix Noonan Webb’s next sale of British and world bank notes is scheduled for April 16 in their London premises, 16 Bolton Street. This will be DNW’s second auction to be orchestrated by their new paper money team of Andrew Pattison and Thomasina Smith. The catalog was a work in progress at the time of writing, but a number of rarities had already made their appearance for collectors of world paper. Currently occupying a top spot is a modern classic: a Bahamas $100 of 1966 sporting a young Queen Elizabeth II at left (P-25a). Graded PCGS 58 PPQ Choice About Uncirculated, the estimate is a not unexpected $12,000-15,000 [£8,000-12,000]. For collectors of British India, there is a very scarce 1937 1,000 rupees drawn on the Karachi branch of the Reserve…

There was a national bank on practically every street corner in Boston prior to 1898 when a massive consolidation of its national banks occurred. There were 84 banks chartered in Boston during the national bank note era, but only six survived through the small note era. You will be forgiven if you don’t remember the names of all of them. The bottom proof in the pair shown is from The Hancock National Bank of Boston, charter 1442. It was named for Massachusetts favorite son John Hancock, the merchant, statesman, and prominent patriot of the American Revolution who served as president of the Second Continental Congress and as the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. His signature is the most flamboyant on the Declaration of Independence, so when…

I hope everyone is enjoying a pleasant beginning to 2019. For this month’s column, we’re going to visit Ohio, one of the so-called “rustbelt” states where many small towns have fallen on hard times. Amesville, Ohio, is a village in Athens County in south central Ohio, about 10 miles northeast of Athens, the home of Ohio University. It is a very small place, with a current population of only about 155. I visited Amesville many years ago, when I was returning by car from Cincinnati to Baltimore via the southern route across Ohio, State Highway 32, which meanders across southern Ohio from Cincinnati to Parkersburg, West Va. It becomes US Route 50 just south of Athens. Amesville was named for Sylvanus Ames, who settled in the area around 1800. He…

New Jersey resident William H. Dillistin (1886-1964) was the leading pioneer national bank note researcher who wrote A Descriptive History of National Bank Notes, 1863-1935, 55 pages, privately published in 1956. His Bank Note Reporters and Counterfeit Detectors, 1826-1866, published as American Numismatic Society monograph 114, 175 pages, in 1949 is still cited by academics as the authoritative work on that topic. His Directory of New Jersey Banks, 1804-1942, Passaic County Historical Society, 98 pages, published in 1942, with several supplements published by the NY FRB as late as 1970, is another classic. This was followed by Historical Directory of the Banks of the State of New York, New York State Bankers Association, 383 pages, published in 1946, also with supplements by the NY FRB. He occasionally wrote articles for…

The field of check collecting has grown steadily ever since the mid-1970s, about the time the Check Collectors Round Table was organized. (In more recent years, the main organization devoted to this collecting area has taken the title of American Society of Check Collectors.) A well-known dealer from Indiana, Neil Sowards, produced a very worthwhile book on the subject, The Handbook of Check Collecting, in 1975, and this publication gave a lot of impetus to the entire field. However, its coverage was restricted to U. S. items only. One aspect of this book that I liked very much was the author’s inclusion of many kinds of fiscal documents other than what we think of as ordinary checks. He defines such items as bank and various other drafts, bills of exchange,…