Status: U Return-Path: Received: from web5204.mail.yahoo.com ([216.115.106.85]) by hazard.mail.mindspring.net (Earthlink Mail Service) with SMTP id tkp487.m1g.37kb01i for ; Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:46:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <20010711174643.16036.qmail@web5204.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [172.144.245.162] by web5204.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:46:43 PDT Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:46:43 -0700 (PDT) From: MPCgram Subject: MPCGram 390 wed To: MPCGram@yahoo.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ============================================== MPC Gram ============================================== Covering the Entire World of Military Numismatics ----------------------------------------------- Series 002-Number 390 Wednesday, July 11, 2001 How to Get Into the Guinness Book of Records… by Richard Lobel We sat at a huge round table in the middle of the wine bar. There were three bottles of champagne on the table and anyone was welcome to sit down, all you needed was £50,000.00 for a seat. People came and went, they asked, we talked, but they had to have that initial 'wad' in order to claim a seat. This was a high stake poker game and you had to have courage as well as the money to take part. It took just over an hour before all the people had made up their minds, to stay or to go. The table was down to just five people and now the serious drinking could begin. Those five people had pledged a quarter of a million pounds to buy just one lot at auction and that auction was starting in half an hour. Those five people had agreed to join together and I was to be the head of the consortium. There were four different nationalities represented in those five places, some had even done deals to sell a share of their share. That was their problem, to make sure that the people sitting at the table would pay their share, if they had to, that was just one of my problems. For four of those people the pressure had been building up for about a month, but for me, it was the end of a quest that had begun about three years earlier. I had been chasing this lot for three years, it was my lot and it had become very very personal to me! I was going to walk away with that lot today or I wasn't, no matter what happened it would be the end of my quest, no matter what. Today it would be over, one way or the other. It had all started three years ago when a certain Government Agency had got in touch with me. They had found something in one of their warehouses in Berlin and was I interested? If you have ever seen the Indiana Jones film where at the end they place the Holy Grail in a vast warehouse, pilled high with thousands and thousands of wooden crates; then you have some idea of the size of the warehouse these crates must have been stored. How can you forget 340 large and very heavy wooden crates? How can you misplace this incredible treasure? Well someone did. After the Second World War, when the British Pound was one of the strongest and most desirable currencies in the world, the government had issued special bank notes for use by our servicemen and women. These were to be used on the military bases instead of Bank of England notes. That way if some of the money got off the base, it was of no use to the local black marketers. Even when I moved to England in 1968, you were only allowed to take out of this country £50 in total, for the entire year! This was the main reason that the package holiday was born. With a package holiday only the actual money spent overseas came off your allowance. The Pound was a wonderful thing and we couldn't have it falling into the wrong hands, could we? These special notes were equal in value to Bank of England notes of the same denominations. At the end of your tour of duty, any notes that you had left could be redeemed in notes of the realm, so to speak. The £5 note from 1950 was the exact equivalent of a White Fiver. In the lot there were also several different Pound notes and from 1971, decimal notes. Who would have thought that in 1971, that the British Pound was still so desirable and that we were still at war. Someone found in this vast warehouse, some 17,000,000 bank notes! They weighed 15 Tons and were in 340 wooden crates. Let me explain a little more about those 'crates'. The notes were bundled up in lots of 50,000 pieces and wrapped in heavy wax paper, this package was put into a large tin box and all the seams were welded shut. The tin box was then placed into a wooden crate. Not one of your thin wooden crates mind you, but one made out of timber so strong that you could build a very solid house out of it. That wooden crate was then banded with thick steel straps and then these were welded together. Trust me, getting into one of those crates even with wire cutters and a crowbar was almost impossible. On the other hand, the crates of £1 notes had a face value of £50,000 and the crate of £5 notes had a face value of £250,000. I had negotiated with this agency for about 12 months and then, nothing happened, it all went quiet. Later on the next year, the person I was dealing was transferred to a new position and I had to start the process all over again. The next person almost came to a decision twice, twice I was within an hour of owning 17 million bank notes that weighed 15 tons. Twice I was disappointed, the pressure got very intense indeed, let me tell you. After my second disappointment I was crushed. In the end some busy body had decided to auction off the whole lot. My dream of owning 17 million bank notes, at the right price was shattered. But it was still my lot and I was going to have it, no matter what! The lot was offered to all the major auction houses and I am happy to say that they all turned it down. After all, who wanted 340 wooden crates in their prestigious premises? Perhaps there was still a chance, perhaps I would still own it, perhaps. Unfortunately not! Phillips' Stamp Department had the courage to attempt to auction off this huge lot of notes. They were use to dealing with large consignments of stamps, stamps bank notes what difference did it make? They are nice people at Phillips, but at that point I could have learned to hate them really easily. They were also very smart about auctioning the notes. They had samples of the notes on hand and if you bought the lot, you had to arrange to pick it up. The only good thing was that the Government had moved the notes back to this country. The Stamp Department at Phillips got in touch with me, as I have been known to buy the odd lot from time to time. After a rather pleasant and frank discussion with them about the size and value of the lot, I was actually given the final choice. It was up to me, did I want it sold in one lot or in a number of lots? I bit the bullet and said, put it all in one lot and let the devil take the hindmost. It would all be over with one roll of the dice. Those who know me, know that I have actually been to Las Vegas, it was only once of course and I only went to visit the museums! That takes us back to that round table in the wine bar, where a seat costs you £50,000 and the champagne was free. We were all slightly the worse for wear, as we staggered off to the auction room to meet our fate. I went up to the auctioneer before the sale started and announced that I was heading up a consortium to bid on the lot and gave him the names of the members of our consortium. This was so that we were bidding within the law, otherwise it might have been considered 'a ring' which was illegal. The auctioneer acknowledged the information and thanked me. He also reminded me at the same time, that I was personally responsible for paying for the lot, should we buy it. The lot came finally came up for sale after many other not so interesting lots. The room quickly quieted down as my eyes swept the room, who was going to bid? Who were those people that I had never seen before? The silence was deafening and everything was in slow motion. The bidding started at £5,000, up to £20,000 there were still about ten bidders in the room. At £30,000 there were four active bidders and at £65,000 there were just two of us left, a dealer from Guernsey and our consortium. After that it was over very quickly and before you knew it, I owed the auction house some £240,350.00! Had that one other bidder not been there, we would have saved £175,000.00! Did I care? Like hell I did, my lot was mine, it had taken three years and many heart aches, but it was mine. Well, mine with four other people and we did owe the auction house rather a bit of money. It was my lot and now I owned it and that was all that mattered. Collecting and distributing the notes was a real pain, but that is another story. Ernie Brooks, a member of the consortium, took charge of the hard work and did a brilliant job. His reward for all the heavy lifting and moving was, that he could take out some of the notes with special serial numbers and make up number sets for his collectors. These sets proved to be a big hit with collectors, since then I have bought the remainder of these special sets from Ernie. We continue to be friends and do a lot of business together, I respect him greatly, I only wish that the other consortium members had been like him. There are many other stories that go with these notes, some I could tell you and others some people would rather I kept secret. My good wife Claire allowed us to use one of the rooms in our basement to store the company's share of the notes. We had just had new carpeting laid, so a heavy plastic sheet had to put down first. The room is about 18' by 22' and the boxes were piled to the ceiling with only a small space in between to get around. Those boxes were there for about two years. We were able to make up sets of seven different British Military Notes, which we still sell today some nine years later. The set consists of 7 uncirculated notes, the £5, three different £1 notes plus the 50p, 10p and 5p decimal issues. You know, I woke up one day and we had run out of sets. There were after all, only about 60,000 sets that could be made up in total. I had to go out into the market and buy part of the share held by one of the other 'seats.' Who would have ever thought that this could happen? Remember our share of the lot was some 3,400,000 bank notes! Before this hoard came on to the market, the £5 note sold very easily for £85 and one of the £1 notes sold for £25. The second £1 note had sold in used condition for £300 and the third £1 had never been sold before. Had it come up for sale it would have sold for at least £1,000. The decimal notes were 'only' worth about £20. So you now had a group of notes that were once worth £1,430 and today you can buy the same set of Uncirculated notes for only £9.95! It just goes to show you what a hoard can do to the market. On the other hand, you can now afford a set of seven different British Military Notes which were once out of the reach of most collectors. I think that it all ended up very well, especially for collectors. That is how I got listed in the Guinness Book of Records that time. All I had to do was buy the largest, heaviest and most expensive lot of bank notes ever sold at auction. Sometime I will tell you about the first lot of British Military bank notes I bought, those didn't get auctioned off†=============================================== Editorial ----------------------------------------------- Wow, is the above story from Richard Lobel great, or what? All of you have stories large and small to tell. Sit down and write them up! Your gram and your fellow collectors want them! ============================================== Mail Call ----------------------------------------------- Bill, Keep reading--JAPWANCAP stamps are explained on page 629 of World War II Remembered. Aside to Fred, The letter about Steve Taylor from the person moving to Milwaukee was obviously from Joel Shafer. Who blew it? You or Joel? Guess in either case you did! Joe Dear Joe, Thanks for the pointer to Remembered. Yes we blew it on the Joel Shafer letter. Sorry about that. Editor ================================================ Departments --------------------------------------------------- Calendar of events for Gramsters maintained by Howard Daniel, John Wilson and Gram staff ---------------------------------------------------- June 28-July 1, 2001, Mid America Coin Expo, Sponsored by Numismatic News, Rosemont Convention Center, Rosemont, IL Auction by B & M - No paper money. About 125 tables July 5-8, 2001, Clearwater Coin Show, Clearwater, FL Over 100 tables July 13-15, 2001, Eastern States Numismatic Expo, Brandywine Terrace, Claymont / Wilmington, DE Probably over 100 tables August 2-5, 2001, 42nd Blue Ridge Numismatic Association, Dalton, GA (about one hour drive from the ANA Atlanta convention the following week) Over 150 Dealers Auction by Lucien Birkler, Washington, D.C. from M & M August 4-5, 2001 Meridian Area Coin Club Coin & Currency Show, Howard Johnson Inn, Meridian, MS August 7-12, 2001, ANA Convention at the Cobb Galleria Center, Atlanta, GA AUGUST 16-19. 2001, 41st Missouri Numismatic Society Coin Festival, Hilton St. Louis Airport St. Louis, MO August 17-19, 2001, Ohio Coin Expo, Cleveland, OH, 125 tables, August 23-26, 2001, CSNS Fall Convention hosted by the MSNS in Dearborn, MI Auction by NTL/Scotsman Coins, Hyatt Regency Dearborn August 23-25, 2001, New England Coin Expo, Holiday Inn, Mansfield, MA, 130 tables August 25-26, 2001, Golden State Coin Show, CSNS 109th Convention & NASC Masonic Temple Arcadia, CA August 31-Sept. 1-2, 2001, Ohio State Coin Show, Columbus Ohio Host CNS/COINS, Marriott North World Paper Money Fair, run by London Chapter of IBNS October 6/7, 2001 Spink Auction October 5, 2001 Phillips Auction October 4, 2001 My London Paper Money Fairs are: July 15/September 2/November 18, 2001 Important 2002 events Lyn Kinght auction of Leo May collection, Chicago, Feb 2002 ANA spring show, Jacksonville FL, 7-9 March 2002. EXHIBIT APPLICATION DEADLINE 11 FEB 2002. [Joe Boling, John and Nancy Wilson confirmed in attendance] MPCFest III, Port Clinton, Ohio March 2002 WWII numismatics seminar at ANA Summer Seminar, July 2002 ANA summer show, New York City, 30 July-4 August 2002. EXHIBIT APPLICATION DEAD LINE 3 JUN 2002. --------------------------------------------------- Donations are now being accepted for scholarships to the 2002 "Military Money" course at the 2002 ANA Summer Seminar. Inquiries and donations should be sent to: Military Numismatists c/o Marcus Turner 8103 East US Highway 36 Suite 163 Avon, IN 46123 FINAL LIST OF SCHOLARSHIP BENEFACTORS for 2001 David Amey, Mr. Anonymous Donor, Mike Cummings, Sue and Keith Bauman, Ed B., Doug Bell, Tom Denly, Continental Coin Invensor, Inc., Denly's, Howard Daniel, R. A. Medina, Harold “MPCKid” Kroll, Leo "Paymaster" May, Mrs. R.C. Matherne, Bill McNease, Marv Mericle, Mel and Jeremy Steinberg, Marcus Turner, Larry Ski, Guido, Fred, PK6, Joel Shafer, World Wide Ventures, Pam West, John and Nancy Wilson, Neil Shafer, W. E. Yanchick, Mark Watson, Al Glaser, Phil Goldstein, Rod Hardy, Wesley Hardy, Gary Hicks, Jack Lippincott, Ian Marshall, Kevin Maloy, David Seelye, Nick Schrier, Elmer Smith, Dan Swartz, Tom Warburton, Dick Freyser, Tim Kyzivat ==================================================== Post/Base Exchange (PX/BX/NEX) Dump your dupes! Your classified advertisement for items for sale will be run here for free. Send your ads to the gram. This service is for everyone, most humble dealer or most advanced collector. The point is to make the gram more interesting. Send in a list of items for sale and we will list them here in the gram. In all cases confirm your order via email first. FOR SALE The following is something for your Post Exchange; For Sale: series 521 10 cents second printing 5 notes in serial number order CH.UNC $150.00 postpaid insured. coinman@rochester.rr.com "Dependents Guide to Japan" booklet for sale. It mentions MPC and other financial "stuff," but there is not a date anywhere in it. The binding is Japanese style and it is in nice condition. $10.00 postpaid. Please do not send money until I confirm you are the first email I receive at Howard@SEAsianTreasury.com. Your items for sale will be listed in the Gram for FREE. Send your listings now. You items for sale support the gram by making it more interesting for everyone! For sale; Netherlands Ministerie Van Oorlog 25 Gulden Pick M3. UNC US$950.00 postpaid, registered mail. coinman@rochester.rr.com New discovery found in Memphis! Unlisted in Schwan/Boling! German Occupied Poland, 1 Punkt (Point) ration note for Vodka. http://www.papermoneyworld.com/mat/vodka.jpg $15 postage paid. Payment is by cash, personal check or paypal (until I reach my monthly receiving limit). Please reserve by e-mail at marcus@papermoneyworld.com. WANTED Collectors may submit lists of items wanted for their collections for listing here. Dealers and collectors who have these items are then encouraged to list them or sale in the above section. This is a trial, if you like it, send your list. =================================================== Staff: publisher and editor: Fred Schwan - fred@papermoneyworld.com; assistant editor - Phil Goldstein IWANTMYMPC@aol.com Tuesday columnist Joe Boling – JoeBoling@aol.com Thurski columnist Larry “Ski” Smulczenski – ski@papermoneyworld.com critic: Harold Kroll - MPCKid@papermoneyworld.com; index manager: Ed Beaman webmaster & technical advisor: Doug Bell - (Wiz): doug@papermoneyworld.com; The Boss: Judy Schwan ===== MPC Gram is published by BNR Press and papermoneyworld.com as a free service to the community of military money collectors. Your suggestions, criticisms, complaints, editorial contributions, letters, and even praise are very welcome. The entire contents including linked illustrations are copyright protected by the publishers. In the case of contributors, the copyright is protected on behalf of the creators. Please send all correspondence regarding the gram to MPCgram@yahoo.com. Thank you very much for your participation. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/