1882 $5 Value Back (Fr. 757b)

CurrenSee

Bought this pretty rough bill for cheap and I noticed it has a pretty scarce signature combination/Friedberg #. Any info on how many others of these are out there? I've only found a few on Heritage, but they were from years ago.

Tookybandit

Value Backs are scarce animals, congrats!!!

goodpaper

You have indeed uncovered a rare Fr. 575b described by Heritage as follows: "This note bears a very rare Treasury signature combination for Value Backs. It occurred, as these signature rarities often do, because of a title change, in this instance occasioned by the anti-German sentiment unleashed by our entrance into the First World War. When plates were prepared with the bank's new title in January of 1918, the then currency Treasury signatures of Teehee and Burke were used making this bank one of very few institutions to use this combination on Value Backs."

Heritage lists five previous sales of Fr. 575b and all were from this bank charter; most seem to carry hefty premiums for their respective grades.

Very cool!

STLNATS

There's a fair number of VBs on the bank, mostly $5s and $10. The current census is not too different than the last Kelly which showed 14 of all denoms.



Two things of interest about this bank, however. First, it was a relatively late (May 1881) charter to receive its first currency as "1st charter" notes. The first BBs for the bank are dated 1901 just before the series of 1902 issues. For this reason the bank received VBs for a relatively long period of time which at least partially accounts for relatively large number of VBs in the census. Second, the title was changed in 1918 to Lincoln NB from the original German NB and the bank's VBs are dated 1918. But, when the bank's charter was extended in 1921 the series of 1902 nationals carry the 1921 date to reflect the extension date and makes no reference to the VB's 1918 date. While interesting, this is not unusual, but was just consistent with the dating convention of the time.



What fun





edited to add: just read GPs comment about the sigs and he makes a great point. I think the only way that a bank would have received this set of sigs was a title change. There were a number of banks around the country that removed "German" from the title, but not many received VBs.

CurrenSee

Thanks for the info. Got it for quite a bit under $100 -- let's say half of $100! I was satisfied.