It's currency but really cool - 1935 Short Snorter
Meltdown
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This was at my local shop yesterday and I couldn't resist...
I love how tattered it is - There are over 20 signatures on this Hawaii note.
For those that do not know, here's a brief explainer...
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A Short-Snorter was a single or series of bank notes upon which friends and acquaintances wrote their names as a remembrance. This tradition was relatively wide spread during the late 1930s with trans-ocean airline pilots, as well as the military, and continued into the World War II period. It was occasionally connected with a drinking game, which the person who had lost or forgotten their Short-Snorter, or who had the least number of names on it, bought the first round of drinks.
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Cool!
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I have a note my late Father gave to me. he received it from his pals in Germany when he returned home in 1945 after WWII, signed by everyone in his company.
a funny circumstance about his wartime service: when he got back he found out his brother, younger by eight years, had sold pretty much all of his belongings, his Baseball card collection, bicycle, baseball mitt and most of his clothing. Uncle Don figured his brother wasn't returning!!
Did not know about 'short snorters'.... Great memento's.... Cheers, RickO
What was his reaction when he had returned and found out?!
Fun stuff!
The early NASA astronauts would sometimes do short snorters in the late 1950's early 1960's. I've got one signed by John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Gus Grissom, Gordo Cooper, Deke Slayton, John Young, Pete Conrad and (obviously later) Al Worden, so 5 of the Mercury 7, two Moon Walkers and one guy who orbited the Moon.
U.S. Type Set
I wonder if any of the signers are still with us? Apparently there about 250,000 WWII veterans still living out of the original 16 million.
I wondered about that myself. I can only make out a couple names clearly. I may try to do some googling later but I'm not very good at online research in that way... it's a big, wide web.
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Now THAT to me, is one real cool note!
Pete
I have my Father's short "snorter" from WW11. Was taped together end-to-end from currencies of different countries he visited while in the South Pacific. Probably about two feet long. Had to un tape and put in currency pockets to preserve the individual bills in one piece. Literally dozens of signatures some of which I met in the 1950''s.
Heard two stories about the custom of carrying one. 1) In a Bar the person with the shortest "snorter" had to buy a round. 2) The person with the highest rank had to buy the round of drinks as well as sign the "snorter". Have no idea which is true.
That's a neat one, especially from Hawaii !
Years ago, I had one made up of multiple Chinese yuan notes, also WWII. They were taped together and the whole thing was about 4 feet long. The last note in the string had a picture of Chiang Kai-Shek on it (I remember it was a very common note from the era). Someone had written, in fountain pen of course, "This is what I'll look like when I get out of here".....It always made me laugh every time I saw it.....
The classic short snorter was originally created by fighter jocks. The deal was that you had to keep it on you. Whenever you got together with anyone else who had signed the note, you asked them to show you theirs, and whoever did not have it on them had to buy a round of drinks for whomever else had signed the note and still had their note with them. Obviously if it was just one person it wasn't too expensive, but if there were multiple people, then it could get rather pricey. Unfortunately, due to the short lifespan of fighter pilots, even if many people had signed the note, oftentimes they wouldn't have to buy many drinks.
U.S. Type Set
It sounds like today's challenge coins serve much the same purpose.
Nice note...I have been acquiring these types of notes for about thirty years now.