Broken Bank Notes Message Board

Greg,
I posted some of this information on the CU forum, but decided to also post it here since information gets lost very fast at the CU forum. I can also more easily post images here. See http://forums.collectors.com/messagevie ... did=683989

Buyoldmoneycom just sold a Texas proprietary proof for $1600 with a BIN of $2350.
See http://cgi.ebay.com/Exceedingly-SCARCE- ... dZViewItem and image below.

This note, TX-6-G2, is listed in Haxby as a proof with the notation of “Probably made as proofs only” and a value of $2000 in 1988. This $1 note is very similar (except for denomination) to the $3 “modern proof” that was issued for the ABNC “The American Paper Money Collection” and that is typically available for about $20. (see images below)

The plate for these notes was $1-1-1-3 and there was one sheet from this plate sold in Christie’s 1990 ABNC archive sale as lot 1936 with pictures of both the $1 and the $3 proofs (see images below). However, the Christie's sheet did not have the fully engraved date that both the “The American Paper Money Collection” and buyoldmoney’s proprietary proofs have.

I suspect that the ABNC pulled full sheets of the 1-1-1-3 proofs and used the $3 notes for the “The American Paper Money Collection,” for which I think that there were several hundred printed. Thus there potentially existed 3 times as many $1 “proofs” as $3 “proofs.” I suspect (speculate) that most, but maybe not all of the $3 notes, were destroyed by the ABNC. The plates were supposedly typically also melted after the production of these kind of proprietary proofs. At least the plate has not showed up in any of the ANR/Stacks/Harmers auctions. This particular proprietary proof probably somehow escaped destruction. Or maybe there are still hundreds of $3 “proofs” out there to surface in the future?

By the way, “The American Paper Money Collection” came out in 1993 after Haxby's 1988 book and Christie's 1990 auction. Thus the January 1st _ _ _ 8 was added to the printing plate.

_________________
Bernie

Thanks for posting this here.

It will probably come as no surprise that this raises the question once more whether we made the right decision when we elected not to track proprietary proofs in our database. I'm still comfortable with the decision. How about you?

- Greg

I certainly agree that it would be fruitless to track PP's.

This does not mean that we should ignore them. That is, we need to be aware of what "bad stuff" is out there so that we don't make mistakes in tracking the "real stuff".

_________________
Bernie

I just noticed that the margins on “The American Paper Money Collection” $3 modern proof are very large such that I doubt that this note was part of a 1-1-1-3 full plate pull. I have a copy of this note and it is not mounted on card but printed on the card. So maybe there are not hundreds of the $1's out there. Maybe they just pulled a few sheets before destroying the plate?

I still wonder how all of this stuff is getting on the market?

_________________
Bernie