Stacks Philadelphia sale

[marv]

Anyone besides me bid in the recent Stacks Americana sale held in Philadelphia? Dave Bowers sold is large size $1 collection, and there were some decent notes at reasonable prices. It was interesting that in almost every case, the auction catalog listed the price Dave paid for the note, and in many cases, what the notes brought in this sale was less than Dave paid for them. I bought lot 60, an Fr. 347 1890 Treasury (or coin) note in a PMG 40 holder. Dave purchased the note in a 2005 ANR (Dave's company) auction as a choice EF but paid $3200 for the note, more than he paid for an AU-graded note, so it must be nice. Apparently faces up as Unc, but has a couple of faint folds which are not visible through the holder. Interestingly, several of the circulated-graded notes were previously graded as Unc before the slabbing companies were in existence. Moreover, it seems that the new owners of PCGS-currency do not guarantee that notes previously graded by the "old" owners of PCGS-currency will be graded the same by the new owners of PCGS-currency. Dave had notes that were graded unc by the previous PCGS, that are now in circulated holders (AU for the most part), so it doesn't look like Dave will make any profits from this sale. However, it was a good opportunity to pick up some relatively rare coin notes. The fancy back 1890s have always been on my want list, but I couldn't bring myself to buy a ratty-looking note just to have one, but the unc notes are pretty pricey ($5000). This nice EF40 note looks like a good compromise.

 

The fancy back coin notes didn't last long as the Treasury decided that their complex reverses were more easily counterfeited than a more open design, so after a couple of years, the design was changed to the "plain" back design. These are much more available than the fancy back design. Fr. 347 is the most available of the $1 notes, but the total known quantity is still only a few hundred, and most of those are in poor shape.

Marv

[Saor Alba]

I watched the live auction online, the layout of the auction left some to be desired, minimum bids were a bit inflated, as were reserves. There were nice items in the auction of course, but I believe that in this current market that the expectations were a bit optimistic.