here's an old note printed by de la rue giori security printers in lausanne, switzerland to display their security printing abilities to prospective clients. the front features johannes gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing. obsolete by todays standards, it's still a well designed, attractive note.




de la rue giori was sold in 2001 to kba security printing (koenig & bauer ag) and is now known as kba-giori. their more modern note, shown here, features jules verne and boasts over 90 security features. i've never seen one for sale, but i'm dying to get my hands on one!

OMG!!! Those are beautiful!!!! I especially love the top one. Oh man. WOW!

You said it! That top Giori is excellent!

Are those relatively easy to be found or do you have to know a friend of a friend of a friend?

here's one for $6.95

http://aes.iupui.edu/rwise/dealerlists/Mor...gains_page6.htm

atsnotes.com sells them for $12.00, and they sometimes pop up on ebay every once in a while.

Holy cow Those are awesome

Very very nice are both. I only have Russian test notes, or what purports to be them:)

do you have any pictures? i'm trying to find similar notes from goznak security printing. very hard to find...

I will have to dig out and scan, actually these are from De La Rue(I think), have Aleksandr Pushkin on them. And gobblygook cyrillic characters, they were test notes printed for Goznak.

Crap! More for the must-have list!!!

Easy Abish. If I purchased every banknote that's "must have", I'd be in the poor house now. And remember, ya can't eat'em. Hmmm...well you could try, but I'm thinking that the polymers would go down hard.

WOW O_O

That's nice!!! Russian security banknotes?!?!?! o_O

Oh that reminded me. Yes, I have seen Australian polymer test trial banknotes. Except their prices are nowhere what I can afford... even if I were to sell my WHOLE collection away.

Nice note! I have good friends in Lausanne, Switzerland.

wow, old post! while i still haven't found the jules verne note i first posted, i did manage to find this beauty from a seller on e-bay, (the same one selling slovenian "lips" ):




i can't wait to see it in person!

Speaking of test notes, here's a Yahoo Group you all may be interested in that I just found, not sure if you guys are aware of it or not but here goes:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/testnote/

yup, i joined that group in may 2005...one month before first posting this original thread! the message board is pretty slow, but they post lots of pictures and have links to the different known test notes. by slow, i mean since february 2006 only 30 messages/responses have been posted.

the bad thing about collecting test notes is that the different security printers don't cater to collectors...ie- they won't sell you a note if you e-mail them about wanting one. they print test notes to show off their security features to prospective clients, and only a limited amount are printed. so...most test notes just sorta show up on ebay, with the majority of the sellers being in germany or the netherlands. it's hard to find particular notes for sale besides the more common series like the "giori one pass" note. one of these days somebody will have that jules verne note for sale, and hopefully i'll be there to spot it!

Beautiful notes. Good luck on the hunt.

Another site to enjoy the variety of test notes (although in German, the pictures speak for themselves!)

gallery

The colour is truly striking. Very beautiful

2 years and 10 days after my original post, i finally acquired the jules verne note!

heheh...i hit the promotional note motherlode and went on another buying spree. i know i was supposed to not buy anything for a year, but i failed that plan miserably.

i'll post my own scans when i get home in august, but here are a few seller scans of a couple of the notes i picked up:








the last one is a swiss polymer note!

fantastic notes.

Man, scrolling past those at just the right speed is like watching Japanese Animation... almost gives one a seizure!

But they sure are awesome looking notes! Congrats on the latest aquisition

Beautilicious!

thanks guys!

i especially like the 500 note from the bulgarian national bank. the silver mask on the left is supposed to be a humongous hologram. the jules verne note's design looks cramped and overcrowded because of all the security features they crammed onto it, and the swiss note color scheme is a little too loud and obnoxious for my tastes. no kidding about seizures! but in the end, the jules verne note represents one of the most technologically advanced "security printing notes" ever produced, (i almost said banknotes), and the other will be my first ever promotional polymer note. i can't wait to see them!

sm- another mucha note finally showed up on ebay earlier today. three were listed for $60, but the seller accepted a best offer of $40. lol...a far cry from the $15 i spent on the first one! oh well...they're getting harder and harder to find, when i used to see them everywhere.

I think our trade was good, both our notes appreciated considerably since we bought them, and we like what we now have - well at least I like mine

lol...yup.

i've still never ever seen another pushkin note similar to the one i got from you. a couple would pop up now and then, but it would have 'specimen' in red, or something else different about it. very pleased with the trade.

And since I know more of Alphonse Mucha and his works and collect anything numismatic associated with his work all the better. Alphonse Mucha designed several of the first banknotes of the new Czechoslovakian Republic in 1919 and they are amongst the most beautiful European banknotes of that time.

The seller of the test notes on eBay has a lot of notes up for sale right now, and he has a seller's market to contend with. But when you notice he is selling the NT Graf(Russian note with Zhukov) for $80, and then look at ATSnotes.com and see they are selling it for $12 you get the picture. ATSnotes is usually on the high end of the price scenario in my opinion, but they do have nice stuff and are easy to find stuff with and have great customer service.

aye, ats is where i picked up the original mucha note for $15. i actually picked up quite a few test notes from ats, and all of them were under $15. on ebay...haven't seen very many in that price range. but $80 is definitely way over for the nt graf note. i highly recommend using the 'best offer' option on all of that particular dealers items.

Recently there are sellers on eBay selling these in the hundreds. Someone has a stash of them.

[font="Arial"][/font][size="2"][/size]The KBA-Giori promotional note is catalog number GIOR-241 in The Catalog of Test Notes, 3rd Edition. I too have never seen in offer for sale!