Please join us at the SPMC meeting at the ANA Chicago show at the Convention center in Rosemont, ILL. The meeting will be in Room 41, 9AM CDT, Saturday, August 9, 2014. Wendell Wolka will be the speaker on preparing to sell a large collection.
Pierre Fricke
A flurry of activity marked our preparation for the International Paper Money Show in Memphis Tenn. this year (2014). This was my first year as President of the Society of Paper Money Collectors (SPMC) going into Memphis. Several activities needed to be planned and I thank the board for their enthusiastic support and efforts. Additionally, a string of very successful shows in the spring precluded the Memphis show which forced me to spend quite a lot of time catching up working up all of the new purchases.
The year of the 150th anniversary the d*mnyankees burned Atlanta :-) .... Pierre
Central States Show – Fun and Profitable!
Joyce and I headed to the Chicago Illinois Central States Numismatic Society Convention in late April for the third time. Our debut was in 2012 where we were part of the 150th anniversary Civil War forum. There I presented an introduction to Confederate paper money to a large crowd, had a lot of fun and had a great show. So we’ve returned each year since and plan on an expanded presence at a corner table in 2015.
Have you ever wondered why no living persons are pictured on our currency? That is because of an unfair vendetta that besmirched the integrity of one of the greatest men ever to work in the Treasury Department--Spencer Morton Clark. Clark was the first Superintendent of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and when the need for the third issue of fractional currency came about, he was responsible to get it printed. With the approval of his superiors, Treasurer Francis Elias Spinner and Secretary of the Treasury, Hugh McCulloch, Clark’s portrait was placed on the five cent note.
The final issue of fractional currency was the fifth one. It was actually an unneeded issue as the U.S. Mint had been issuing more and more coins since the end of the Civil War. Almost $63,000,000 was printed between February 26, 1874 and February 15, 1876, with an estimated $15,276,443 outstanding as of 1884. The issue was comprised of only three denominations, 10ɇ, 25ɇ and 50ɇ.
With the widespread counterfeiting of the second issue of fractional currency, the third issue came into being. It is by far the largest issue with the most varieties and includes the smallest note every printed, both in size and denomination by the United States, the three-cent notes. It is also the issue that has five of the six most expensive notes ever sold, the Fr. 1351-1354 and the Fr. 1373A. The first third issue fifty-cent notes had the depiction of Justice holding scales and a sword. They were first released on December 5, 1864. The first were Fr.
Fred Reed has hit another homerun with his new book on Civil War Stamp Envelopes. The topic is one that has a limited collector base due to the relatively small number that still exist today (128 merchants issued 514 different varieties). But Fred has once again, as with his Encased Postage Stamp (EPS) and Lincoln books, gone above the normal item catalog and has completed a historical masterpiece. As a collector and researcher, I have been concerned that we are losing the history of the notes and other items as the hobby is seemingly becoming more focused on the financial aspect.
I've always thought that the area of U.S. obsolete notes remains the wild west of paper money; there is much in the field that has yet to be discovered and mapped. But there are a great many references that have been created over the last century that collectors of state notes can use to help build their collections. Many works have been sponsored by the SPMC over the last 50 years. Here is a partial list of titles -- I am sure there are others still missing in my library:
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