Banknote Reporter February 2023

Welcome to the New Year and the beginning of another set of the tours of small towns and their national banks for which you have become accustomed. This month we’ll be visiting Clairton, Penn. Though at one time called the “Coke Capital of the World” for its steel producing capacity, Clairton has fallen on hard times and has turned quite ghostly. Clairton is a city of roughly 6,500 in Allegheny County that sits on the meandering Monongahela River about 15 miles as the crow flies southeast of Pittsburgh. It is easily reached via State Route 837 (along the river) or State Route 885. Clairton’s existence began just after the turn of the 20th century when the United States Steel Corporation acquired a large tract along the west side of the Monongahela…

The National Gold Bank of D.O. Mills & Co., Sacramento, was organized July 6, 1872, chartered July 29, 1872, and converted into a regular national bank on Sept. 15, 1883 under the terms of an Act passed Feb. 14, 1880. The act allowing for conversion followed close on the heels of the resumption of species payments by the U.S. Treasury on Jan. 1, 1879. Resumption removed all incentives for the gold banks to operate because regular national bank notes were then convertible into gold. Signers Edgar Mills and Frank Miller served respectively as the president and cashier of the bank during its entire gold bank era. The bank originated as the private bank of D.O. Mills & Company in 1850. Organizer Darius Ogden Mills was born in 1925 in North Salem, N.Y.,…

Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) recently graded one of the rarest and most important bank notes in United States history. The note, a Civil War-era 1863 $20 Gold Certificate, was submitted by Stack’s Bowers Galleries for grading through PCGS Banknote. The Gold Certificate emerged from the very first issue of United States Gold Certificates and features a brilliant golden-orange color on its reverse to represent the precious metal by which the note was backed. A Liberty Head double eagle gold coin is depicted at the center of the printed design on the reverse of the note. Early Gold Certificates, such as this piece, seldom saw circulation in general commerce and were primarily used for settling gold reserve balances between financial institutions. The note came in two varieties, with Assistant United States Treasurer…

FEBRUARY 2023 U.S. Paper Money Price Guide It has been a quiet month in paper money, perhaps getting ready for the FUN show which I’ll be reporting on in the next issue. The Hap Selders sale later in January will present a puzzle for Pennsylvania National Bank note collectors. In a sale that large how do you anticipate the notes you want? There will be so many and perhaps the order in which they come up will make for difficult choices, as to what to bid on regarding your budget. As I write this just after Christmas, the FUN catalog has arrived in the mail. It is voluminous, to say the least. The good news for me is that there is nothing being offered that I can’t live without, so I…

A rare vintage note from Hong Kong was sold for over $50,000 in the Spink Winter Auction, held Jan. 7-12, 2023. Hundreds of notes, primarily from China, were included in the sale. Topping the auction was a Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation 1930 $500 graded PMG 55 About Uncirculated EPQ (CSS86D, lot 3096) that realized 420,000 HKD (about $54,000). This note features an obverse depicting a woman seated at right, with two hand-signed signatures, and on the reverse is the HSBC building headquarters. This is only one of two examples with an EPQ designation, and the second highest grade known, according to the auction house. Other notes in this auction included: • a Taiwan Democratic State 1895 5 Yuan graded PMG 35 Choice Very Fine (CSS86A, lot 77) that realized 420,000 HKD…

Rarities from Venezuela and Ethiopia were the top lots among over 750 world bank notes in a recent Stack’s Bowers auction. The premier paper money sessions of the auction house’s January 2023 NYINC Auction were held on January 14 (Session C) and Jan. 15, 2023 (Session G). Realizing $84,000, the top note in the auction was a Venezuela, Banco Nacional 1841 5 Pesos graded PMG 12 Fine (lot 30158) that realized $84,000 — many times its pre-auction estimate of $1,000 to $2,000. This uniface note is the only issued example of this catalog number in the PMG Population Report and is pedigreed as the plate note for “Billetes de Venezela.” Another top highlight of the auction was an Ethiopia, Bank of Ethiopia 1932-33 500 Thalers graded PMG 65 Gem Uncirculated EPQ, which…