Stack s Bowers Offers 1880 $1,000 Legal Tender Note, Rare Mexican Currency at August ANA Auction
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Costa Mesa, CA Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ first live United States currency auction event of 2021 was a tremendous success that saw nine lots cross the six-figure mark on Thursday night, March 25. In all 525 lots of U.S. realized a total of $4,062,654 during the live session of the auction. (All prices include the buyer’s fee.) The leading lot of the night was the Fr.167a 1863 $100 “Spread Eagle” Legal Tender Note graded Choice Uncirculated 63 by PCGS Banknote. It realized $264,000. A pair of ultra-high denomination notes each sold for $180,000. They were a Fr.2221-K 1934 $5000 from Dallas graded Choice Uncirculated 64 EPQ by PMG
Obsolete US Currency Highlights: Polar Air and Polar Bear Notes
Obsolete currency collectors are often drawn to notes with visually striking and dramatic vignettes. Notes from the
Continental Bank of Boston have provided collectors with green and black printed remainders that feature bold vignettes and have been popularly collected for years – Polar Bear Notes. The March
PMG.
As freezing arctic air has swept across much of the country, the image found on the
$3 Continental Bank note from this sheet seems particularly appropriate. Titled “The White Bear”, the vignette by
American Bank Note Company (ABNC) engraver
F.O.C. Darley displays four men in a small boat about to be overturned by an attacking polar bear. The scene is one of the most recognizable in all of obsolete currency, if not American currency as a whole. The type is listed as No. 24 in
Karelian Collection, including a
Watermelon Note” or “
Baby Watermelon” (as opposed to its $1,000 “
Grand Watermelon” counterpart) due to the distinctive large zeros found on the back of the note that bear an unmistakable resemblance to the fruit.
The face portrays Admiral
David Farragut at right with a large 100 counter just left of center. Engraved signatures of Treasury officers
Rosecrans and
Huston are seen along the bottom border. A large brown spiked Treasury Seal is near the center.
Watermelon notes are represented by just one catalog number, of which 120,000 were printed and issued. Today only 35 examples are known, and of those, at least seven are in government or institutional collections and unavailable to collectors. The 1890 $100 Treasury Notes were replaced by the
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