Hello All in 2015.

The market has been quite robust this past couple of years. Especially so for the premium rarities in high grades or even some notes we considered ‘common’ selling for 10 times what they would have sold for in the run-up to the last small-size, market peak, April of 2008. Of course the more generic material that is always readily available remains so and at prices similar to 10 years ago. The strengthening economy has seen an uptick in this market as well as the “program” buyers have started sucking more material up for the non-numismatic marketplace.

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

The year of the 150th anniversary the d*mnyankees burned Atlanta :-) .... Pierre

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.

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.