Largest signature on a national?

larry510

Can anyone top this one?

Steve_in_Tampa

gsalex

Nothing small about that New York note -- it also has one of the longest titles I've ever seen!

larry510

That's what caught my eye when I found it at a coin shop. The busy bank name and the large bold signature.

Tookybandit

Here's a monster vanity signature!



HA image, not my note.





...and another

larry510

Wow I think the Marquette is the champ for overall size! But mine gets the bold award with a close second going to Morristown!

ProofArtworkonCircs

L. Kaufman was quite a coin collector.

gsalex

What makes me laugh on that Frontier note is that the cashier sig is just as large as the president's. You wonder whether the cashier was trying to one-up him or if he felt like he had to match the size so the president wouldn't look so bad.

cinch

Tooky, that Marquette note is just nuts. Could you imagine if he signed everything like that?

DepressionscripGuy

Those are some crazy signatures.

Borchgrave

The story behind the Marquette note is that the president, Peter White, was very old at the time, and signed the Red Seals with this very large vanity signature. There are a few of them out there, all very high grade. The Chatham Phenix note is extremely common - the signatures on that are overprinted on the note, and not handsigned. That bank was too big to have the officers hand sign anything.

Jim61

I kinda chuckled - scribble came to mind.

ArriJacob

Originally posted by: Borchgrave
...The Chatham Phenix note is extremely common - the signatures on that are overprinted on the note, and not handsigned. That bank was too big to have the officers hand sign anything.

And was the only bank in the USA to have used the BEP to overprint the signatures on their notes.

Bank of Italy, NT&SA (13044) also was a bank too big to have notes pen siged. In fact I have seen the #1 set of notes that LFK auctioned off and even those notes have printed signatures. However, either in 2014 or 2015 a single note showed up on eBay in TPG holder that has real pen signatures of the cashier and a vice president!

Nevada NB of San Francisco (5105) is another bank, while not a big issuer of notes, I've only seen 2 notes with pen signatures!

STLNATS

Originally posted by: ArriJacob

Originally posted by: Borchgrave

...The Chatham Phenix note is extremely common - the signatures on that are overprinted on the note, and not handsigned. That bank was too big to have the officers hand sign anything.

And was the only bank in the USA to have used the BEP to overprint the signatures on their notes.



Bank of Italy, NT&SA (13044) also was a bank too big to have notes pen siged. In fact I have seen the #1 set of notes that LFK auctioned off and even those notes have printed signatures. However, either in 2014 or 2015 a single note showed up on eBay in TPG holder that has real pen signatures of the cashier and a vice president!



Nevada NB of San Francisco (5105) is another bank, while not a big issuer of notes, I've only seen 2 notes with pen signatures!

+1, great points.



Real autographs on some of the big banks are true rarities and it's where local knowledge is a big advantage. For STL, 4178 is by far one of the most common notes one encounters anywhere; the only pen signed note I've encountered is the 02 PB in horrible grade with autographed VP and cashier sigs that I posted last year. It's also the only VP sig on a 4178 I've ever seen. I believe it was some sort of souvenir presented to the VP, but haven't been able to id a specific contemporary event.



Similar to the 13044, my 82BB #1 $5 on 5172 is a printed sig; the only pen signed note I've seen on the bank is the #2 82DB $50 that I snagged several years ago (an which is the only pen signed example of the 4 or so reported). There may be others around on both banks but I haven't seen them (but do keep looking).



The Chatham Phenix overprint by the BEP is discussed in an article somewhere. There's a bit of a quibble about whether it's possible to id which specific notes or range of notes received the overprinted sigs by BEP but it appears to have been most of them. At any rate, this was actually rather expensive for the bank which could have saved a lot of money if they'd taken the option to have the sigs engraved on the plates instead.



What makes me laugh on that Frontier note is that the cashier sig is just as large as the president's. You wonder whether the cashier was trying to one-up him or if he felt like he had to match the size so the president wouldn't look so bad.



I don't know this specific bank, but for many smaller ones, the cashier actually acted as the chief executive and chief operating officer of the bank. Presidents might have had little experience in banking but were key investors, prominent community leaders and/or what today would be considered "rainmakers." Usually this was fine, but it could lead to serious problems when the prez and the board wasn't too attentive and were too reliant on the cashier who might be incompetent or dishonest or both. Two cases that come to mind in STL are the FNB of Manchester MO and the Washington NB of St Louis. Early on both had the same cashier who at best seemed to be busy putting "bad paper" on the books, was juggling assets between the two banks and a local trust company, and had very lax controls (what a shock). He was kicked out of both places fairly quickly but both banks struggled afterward before becoming a state bank and being acquired respectively.