Innehållsförteckning för March 2019 från Banknote Reporter

A remarkable report documents the steps involved in handling currency sheets as they passed through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1877 on their way to becoming notes. The value of this report is twofold. First, it precisely lays out the order in which the various items were printed on the sheets. Second, it reveals how often the sheets were handled in the process. Two types of currency are treated in the report: Series of 1875 legal tender notes and Series of 1875 national bank notes other than $5s. The two classes involved different steps, explaining why they were profiled separately. The backs of the legal tender notes were printed by the Columbian Bank Note Company, so the thread picks up once the sheets arrived at the BEP. The…

This 50 centavos Revolution issue from Yucatan is one of the highest-rated condition rarities I have ever encountered. In every other instance where I have seen any example, the back design and, most assuredly, any text of any kind is practically indecipherable. The note shown here is the single piece in uncirculated condition that I have ever come across. A detailed description of the back and the entire inscription follows: At center, the monument has figures of an Indian facing left and a freed female slave with a broken chain facing right. On the monument are the words, Constitucion y Reforma. Text below: Este billete circulara conforme al Decreto no. 550 de Mayo 23(?) de 1916. CINCUENTA CENTAVOS across bottom. In upper corners, Oro Nacional above 50 in circle, CENTAVOS…

February was quite the cold and snowy month across much of the country. While we in Baltimore shivered at temperatures below 20 degrees, much of the country suffered much worse. One can hardly imagine living in Iowa with temperatures below -20 degrees Fahrenheit. These cold winter days are perfect times for sitting down and perusing one’s collection. I recently obtained two attractive small-town large size Kansas notes and thought that I would write about them for this month’s article. So let’s visit rural Hartford and Nortonville, Kansas. Hartford, located twenty miles southeast of Emporia via I-35 and State Route 130, sits on the northwest edge of John Redmond Lake in Lyon County, near the Coffey County line. When the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad pushed through the area in 1858,…

For reasons best known to the issuing banks, several early Costa Rican bank notes show vignettes of one and possibly two British Queens – although one was merely a Princess at time of issue. One such note formed part of the “The Ibrahim Salem Collection of South America” offered by Spink in their Jan. 11 New York sale. The item in question was a rare specimen 50 pesos of El Banco Anglo-Costa-Ricense dated 1 January 1864 (P-S110s). In their catalog description, Spink note that the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, Specialized Issues, identifies the portrait at top center as that of Queen Victoria. Their sole comment concerning this ID was to end that sentence with an abrupt exclamation mark! Certainly SCWPM does indeed name the woman who appears on…

How did this strange misaligned overprint error occur where the green Treasury seal landed on the same spot as the right serial number? A logical assumption would be that the green elements are printed on one mono-color unit in the overprinting press and the black on another, thus making this error impossible. This note was overprinted on a COPE numbering and sealing press. An interesting characteristic of the COPE machine that overprinted this note is that the seals and district identifiers were printed from one rotary unit in the machine and the serial numbers from a second unit. The unit with the seals and district identifies was a bi-color black/green unit whereas that with the serial numbers was a mono-color green unit.…

It is generally acknowledged that the main difference between a collector and a student of numismatics is the emphasis placed on the multitude of major (and often minor) variations as opposed to the simple amassing of any given collection, often by main type. Obviously, it is a lot easier to collect by type, as then you are interested in acquiring only a single example representing quite possibly hundreds of all kinds of variations. In past years, it was more difficult to perform detailed research in any given field, numismatics included. The Internet has rendered such work relatively easy in many cases. That, along with a general growth of interest in the recording of numismatic differences in a number of given series, has added greatly to the factual base from which…

Heritage Auctions’ paper money team should be more than content with the results of their Jan. 9-15 FUN World Currency Signature sale in Orlando At hammer fall, the total realized had achieved a most satisfactory $2,042,662, with 32 lots fetching in excess of $10,000. Two major collections contributed to the majority of top prices: The Minot Collection and Yuri Solovey Collection of Canada. Both came jam-packed with high-grade rarities – and one or two of those super-rarities whose grade is nigh irrelevant! When any Zanzibar note is offered in any world paper sale, it can be expected to top the bill. Such was the case in Orlando when the Minot Collection supplied an issued 10 rupees dated 1 February 1928 (P-3). It was a lovely example graded PMG Very Fine…