a couple of Greek notes
Andres
Posts: 977 ✭✭✭
collector of Greek banknotes - most beautifull world banknotes - Greek & Roman ancient coins.
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Andres
Posts: 977 ✭✭✭
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Jim61
Looking for $1 CU FRN radar 16566561 - NOT ANY MORE, THANK YOU delistamps and TheRock!
Looking for $1 CU FRN radar 16977961.
Looking for $1 CU FRN 99999961 - NOT ANY MORE, THANK YOU delistamps!
Looking for $50 FRN 00000061
Interesting little side note about the Bulgarian note, the young lady on the reverse is Evdokia Kovacheva, she was still alive in the 1980s and was autographing these notes.
I know of a collector who forwarded notes to Simeon in the early 2000s and he signed them. His sister opened the ANA in New York in 2002.
watermarked paper:
Evdokia wears a necklace with coins:
8 little bankstamps on the reverse, no idear what they mean.
The first note, the 1947 small size green 20K Drs is a note whose rarity in choice-gem unc I truly underestimated: it's last appearance in public auction was three years ago at Stack's, the latter still with the old, slow and problematic website which was rewarding patient bidders such as myself, with two consecutive S/Ns , one graded PCGS 65 PPQ and the other 67 PPQ (the 65 was due to a slight mishandling of one of these two pristine notes by the owner-submitter) and realized approx. $1100 and $1600 respectively. The winner of the 65 PPQ, a friend of mine, actually cut the PCGS holder open, "fixed" whatever was causing the grade difference, resubmitted it and now has it in a 66 PPQ holder. It was the last time I've stayed in the sidelines just watching the market ,as I was doing for the past 24 months back then, refreshing my grading skills and following the market's current prices.
It was also the single raw note where I was tricked into buying a choice-gem looking note for 600 euros (this should have been a red flag but I've ignored it), only to see it coming back graded 50 by PMG. Lesson learned, I still own that note.
The large one below it, belongs to the 4-5 rarer post 1927 Greek notes in unc, (issued by the Bank of Greece), where a minimum of 2000 euros is needed to buy it in graded choice unc and upto 3000 in graded gem unc.
I only buy these notes in choice unc and above, simply because they are still available for affordable prices, so it would be a shame to miss this chance. I only lack 4 notes to complete the entire Bank of Greece set ,graded 63 EPQ/PPQ and above, the vast majority of which has been bought raw.
Even now that I've finally entered the real race to purchase as many 19th and very early 20th century banknotes in the best condition available (often not higher than F15-VF25), I can see that the prices/vs rarity ratio are too low and this isn't something that's going to last forever.
The 1000 Drs of the Casa Med series is the most affordable note of the series (the large sized ones): again, the last appearance of graded unc examples at auction was at Heritage 27 months ago, (from the Ruth Hill collection) where a 500 Drs PCGS 67 PPQ realized a stupid ~$3000, but with a very strong euro back then, i.e. 2150 euros, and one of the two key notes of the series, the highest denomination of 20K Drs in PCGS 64PPQ realized just shy of $2000. The rest of the notes were (graded) between VF and AU and realized very low amounts in comparison. The incredibly high price of the 500 Drs was an indication of the gradeflation that is about to take place, now that certification has arrived and has quickly won the hearts of both collectors (most of which cannot grade even if their life depended on it) and dealers alike (the dealers welcomed it because they found the perfect excuse to increase their prices that had taken a turn for the worse the past 6 years). Like Andres, I bought just the 1000 Drs, because I happened to come across a graded 65 EPQ one at $395.00 ,which was a bargain. I had 3 VF-XF examples of the same denomination that I sold at around $75 apiece on average and one that I gave out for free to the wrong recipient. I wish I knew you wanted one Andres.
Casa Med notes also exist for Egypt and Sudan but only in specimen form, as they never circulated in any of these two countries.
I'll pass on the Bulgarians that have been extensively discussed anyway, but I can't hide my admiration for the grade of P69a, a note that made the cover of Krause a few years ago and truly one of the most beautiful Greek notes ever printed, the centerpiece of most Greek collections that do not have any pre 1900 examples besides fractionals (one of the last and nicest by ABNC). You'll notice that the issuing bank is the National Bank of Greece, who at the time had become the only bank with issuing rights, before the Bank of Greece was created in 1927 (and who used overprinted notes from the National Bank for the first 5 years of its existence) and after the end of issuing rights by the Ionian and Epirothessaly bank until a few years before. This and the other two here are all overprinted NEON in red, (=NEW) because the majority of these 1918-1926 banknotes are designs that already existed and were or were not released into circulation in previous dates.
I'd grade the note as 45 from the picture, (it would be higher if it weren't for the margins/corner folds) a more than respectable grade for this note (of which I have yet to see a pure unc example of an issued note) and a very pleasant example overall ,free of stains, tears, multiple folds and strong circulation signs, judging from the image. The vast majority of these notes have been (and still are) repatriated from Turkey, because they were printed (1921-22) mostly for payments of the troops stationed in Turkey, a year and two before the Armenian genocide and the defeat of the Greek army who had just recaptured Constantinople a year before, but stupidly went after Kemal's troops deeply inside the East of Turkey, not only underestimating the newly found enthusiasm of Kemal's troops, but also without counting the exhaustion of the soldiers who were fighting for 10 years in a row, liberating over half of Greece's territory, taking part in the First World War and triumphantly entering Constantinople, but without any logistics, i.e. ammunition, supplies etc, following the soldiers.
It's interesting to note here, how huge the amount of 1000 Drs was for the time (the most popular notes of that period were 5 drachmai notes, that circulated heavily because the last silver 5 drachmai coin was minted in 1876), as well as the 500 Drs notes that existed from the last 30 years of the 19th century and Greece's entry to the Latin Monetary Union, and were in fact gold certificates, equal to 5 ounces of gold each (10 oz for the 1000, but by that time, the gold standard was practically already in limbo if not abandoned).
Another favorite is the 10 Drs P88a, a very pleasant, clean and strong VF, as well as an essential note for any decent collection of Greek notes, and finally, I'd grade the 1918 25 Drs, P65a, a design that was being issued for the third and last time (the first in 1903, very rare even in specimen, the second -9th edition- covering the years between 1909-1918 and this for 1918-1919) as an XF too from the picture, it looks in fact less pleasant than P69a, but that won't stop me from making you an unethical offer in case you'd like to flip it Andres.
Great haul overall!
myEbay
DPOTD 3
Here are some details of the 500 Leva Boris II / Evdokia note (didn't know her name, thanks)
They are actually little security strips that were moulded into the paper when the paper was manufactured by Giesecke and Devrient. You will notice similar security strips in some German notes of the era, also Croatian notes from the Croatian puppet state.
D, I bought this green 20.000 Dr. 1947 small note recently as an upgrade for the one in the OP.