Iran Provisional Overprints

[DizzyMizzy]

Hello:

 

 

I know that Iran officially released 3 series of provisional banknotes in 1979 alone. These are the Overprint series, with the picture of the Shah obliterated.

 

All my sources state that the three series were sequentially released, but it does not include any other date information (months produced and released, etc). Does anyone know specifically when, within that year, these were released into circulation? Any sources or leads would be great.

 

Thanks,

J

[San_Miguel98]

i don't think there ever was a controlled release of banknotes by design, so i'm not sure a by-month or by-year classification is possible. the one place i thought of when it comes to iranian banknotes was iranbanknotes.com. lol...who'da thunk it, right? anyway, here's what he had to say that led me to believe my earlier statement:

 

Remember these notes were being overprinted in Tehran, under no supervision, no quality control, and no security while there was Revolution and shootings in the streets. It is possible one printing house had run out of black ink and started using green. I have a banknote from the beginning of a bundle with very dark green and the last from the same bundle very light green.

 

When buying the Provisional banknotes do not expect perfect UNC. Remember that these banknotes were printed by Thomas de La Rue, sent to Tehran, counted, checked, controlled and moved from vault to vault in the Central Bank for a number of years. When the Revolution started, hundreds of bundles were placed (maybe in carton boxes) and sent to several local printers for overprinting. The banknotes were then placed in the printing machines, and overprinted one by one, recounted, and bundled, returned to the Central Bank, recounted again. Expect some mishandling, slight folds, and sometimes extra ink.

 

the owner of the website was in tehran during the revolution, and also runs mebanknotes.com and armenstamp.com. for reference, his iran site keeps images of all the different varieties, including a few unofficial overprints made with rubber-stamped X's. judging by his descriptions, the overstamping sounds like a very disorganized affair.

 

by the way, welcome to coinpeople!

[DizzyMizzy]

Thanks so much. I contacted Armen already and he expressed the same disorganization.

 

It is unfortunate. :-/

 

 

Thanks for the welcome and the reply,

J

[Scottishmoney]

During the Iran hostage crisis, when the US military attempted the rescue mission there were bundles of currency found in the wreckage of the aircraft that crashed at Desert One, the staging area for the mission. I wonder if it was overprinted currency or if it was the pre-Revolution currency with the Shah's image not obliterated and whether it would have stood out when used?

 

As much as gold is used in that part of the world for larger transactions I wonder that Pahlavi's would have been a better option.