In the 1800s and early 1900s, crooks enriched themselves by “raising” bills — making low denomination bills look like bigger ones. Using ink, erasers, scrapers and bits taken from other bills, crooks commonly converted $1 bills to $10 notes and $2 notes to $20 bills. Contemporary newspaper stories about raised bills make for interesting reading but lead, too, to mourning...
The IBNS Banknote of the Year award is an initiative of the International Bank Note Society to recognize an exceptional bank note issued each year.
A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Company on Jan. 13 credits the use of polymer in Canada’s new bank notes starting four years ago with a 74 percent drop in the number of fakes passed to retailers in 2015.
The effort to place a woman on U.S. paper currency was brought back into the spotlight Jan. 21 with the introduction of Senate Resolution 348 by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., titled “A resolution supporting efforts to place a woman on the currency of the United States.”
The Central Bank of Argentina announced on Jan. 15 that it will soon release an entirely new currency series. Beginning in mid-2016 it will issue its highest denomination notes ever, denominated 200 pesos and 500 pesos, and that next year a 1,000-peso note will be put into circulation, as well.
David Bowie, who passed away on Jan. 10, has been portrayed on a £10 note issued for local use in Brixton, England, since 2011. With the Bank of England scheduled to issue a new £20 note by 2020, a movement is afoot to replace the portrait of Scottish political economist Adam Smith with that of the late rock legend. Bank of England officials, however, have already...
So few of them, each a distinct individual but united as a sisterhood — the sisterhood of women whose portraits have been depicted on paper money issued in the United States. Sometime in the 2020s, the sisterhood will gain a new member when an as-yet-announced woman is named as the star of the next version of the $10 Federal Reserve note.
A previously unknown unique signed and issued $500 Treasury note of Jan. 22, 1847, sold for $199,750 at the Heritage Currency Auctions Signature sale on Jan. 8 in Tampa, during the Florida United Numismatists convention. It was the most expensive note in the auction.
Ukraine’s new 500-hryvnia note is intended to provide increased security and not make any political statements. The biggest changes concerned the “updating of certain design elements and the implementation of ‘window’ protective tape and the optically-variable element SPARK® technology.”
Most paper money collectors are familiar with the formation of the American Bank Note Co. in 1858. Seven of the nation’s most prominent security printers decided to merge and form the nation’s largest firm dedicated to this business. It would be interesting to speculate whether this merger would have survived today’s antitrust laws.
