Lyn Knight’s Chicago Paper Money Expo bank note auction March 28-29 drew 592 bidders who together helped push the overall total price realized to about $2.7 million dollars. Among the 478 successful buyers is new owner of a four-note uncut sheet of Original Series National Bank Notes from Montana Territory, issued by the First National Bank of Helena.

The sheet consists of three $1 notes and a single $2 note with the very popular “Lazy Deuce” design. This sheet surfaced in 2004, the first time it left the hands of the family that acquired it around 1870.

Knight said only three uncut sheets of any type are known from Territorial national banks, excluding the District of Alaska. One is the in the American Numismatic Association museum, leaving two available for collectors.

He graded this sheet very fine, and it sold for $299,000 dollars, including 15 percent buyer’s fee.

Other highlights of Knight’s 2,700-lot auction were an 1864 $50 Interest Bearing Note dated April 20, referenced as Friedberg 203 and graded fine by catalogers. It brought $54,625 dollars.

Another Interest Bearing Note, a $20 dated March 18, 1864, Fr. 197, graded Apparent VF-25 Net by PCGS Currency, crossed the block for $33,350.

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By David L. Ganz, Numismatic News

This is a two part column talking about auction pedigrees (Part I) with a focus on the Mickley-Hawn-Quellar 1804 silver dollar and the Anderson-Dupont-Yoder 1838-O half dollar. Part II tells the fascinating story of tracking down a footnote – a price realized 20 years ago – on a pedigreed piece highlighted in my new book, “Profitable Coin Collecting,” which Krause will publish July 20. Rare coins are white hot. On April 17, Heritage sold the David Quellar family specimen of the 1804 silver dollar for $3.7 million, and the Yoder family 1838-O half dollar (a circulated proof-45) for $276,000. Both coins and all others quoted refer to the hammer price plus the buyer’s premium, if any, charged winning bidders.

Both pieces realized prove the state of the market when looked at in the context of the lengthy pedigree that each offers. The 1804 dollar goes back 140 years; the 1838-O half dollar covers a half century of the coin market with its ups, downs, and sideways momentum.

For more than 40 years, I’ve been writing about the rare coin market and auction sale trends, and have charted the path that I called in one book “planning your rare coin retirement.” It’s become more important to me as I get nearer to my own; my 57th birthday (coincidentally my 43rd year as a coin writer) comes up July 28.

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By Kerry Rodgers, World Coin News

Collectors of pattern coins and trials need to take a long hard look at Roxbury’s catalog for the firm’s May 22 Queensland auction. It includes an Australian classic, an example of the 1937 uniface, reverse and pattern for Australia’s penny showing a bounding kangaroo (SCWC Pn24).

This was the first time this Australian icon had appeared – by itself – on any Commonwealth coin. It would remain as the reverse design for the penny and halfpenny until 1964. At the Royal Mint a series of different patterns were struck of Kruger Gray’s incisive but simple design. All are excessively rare with very few in private hands. The Standard Catalog entry for this item does not differentiate between the four possible patterns.

The uniface version comes with the word MODEL across the coin’s obverse as shown here. However, it exists with both a hole drilled in the planchet or unholed. The 2007 edition of Renniks Australian Coin and Banknote Values give the mintage of the uniface “model’ as 8 and with a value as A$110,000. However, this catalog does not distinguish holed from unholed.

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