Status: U Return-Path: Received: from web12704.mail.yahoo.com ([216.136.173.241]) by tyner.mail.mindspring.net (Earthlink Mail Service) with SMTP id toada2.8hb.37kbi5q for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 12:54:26 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <20010823165412.3512.qmail@web12704.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [208.35.163.183] by web12704.mail.yahoo.com; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 09:54:12 PDT Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 09:54:12 -0700 (PDT) From: MPCgram Subject: MPCGram 422/3 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 422 Wednesday August 22, 2001 My First Lot of British Military Notes… by Richard Lobel, Chairman of Coincraft When I ‘published’ the story about the second lot of British Military notes that I purchased, a gentleman from New England, where everyone man is a gentleman, asked me about the original lot. This is something that I haven’t thought about for a very long time, nor have I have written about it, either the purchase or the sale, so here goes…. In 1977 we had moved from Cavendish Court on Wigmore Street to our present location at 45 Great Russell Street, just across the street from the British Museum. On the 22nd of October 1980, G. J. L. Evans, Captain, for the Paymaster-in-Chief, sent around a circular letter. I was included on the mailing list, but at our old address. God bless the Post Office, they correctly forwarded the letter to our Great Russell Street offices where it found me. In this letter, Captain Evans, offered 50,000 pieces each of the following British Armed Forces Special Vouchers: 2nd Series 5 Shillings, 3rd Series Shilling and Ten Shilling, 4th Series Shilling and Ten Shillings. He said ‘The Ministry of Defence have the following denominations and quantities of pre-decimalization British Armed Forces Special Vouchers for disposal:’ The letter went on to say ‘Before contemplating destruction (my bold lettering!!!) of these notes, we consider that they may be of interest to collectors and are therefore considering offering them for sale.’ He then asked ‘will you please advise me whether you would be interested in this purchase and if so, you are invited to tender, stating the quantity you require and the amount you would be prepared to pay for the notes.’ Most interestingly was item 4: ‘I am to point out that the sale would be of sealed boxes containing 50,000 notes each and made to one dealer only, the unsold quantity of notes being destroyed. To comply with Treasury requirements, they would have to be overstamped ‘cancelled’ before being offered to the public and a written undertaking to this effect would be required prior to any sale’. Here was a quite inexpensive mimeographed letter offering me, what I later learned to be, potentially untold and fabulous riches. We didn’t even look the notes up in Pick, we just thought that they would make wonderful Free Gifts for our collectors. At that time with any order of £25 or more, from one of our publications, you were given a Free numismatic gift. These were British banknotes and therefore they would make an excellent Free Gift. That was my original thought on the subject and that was the reason that I decided to make the offer on the notes. We were going to give them away… We called Captain Evans and found out that there were not 50,000 notes of each available, but hundreds of thousands of notes. On the 28th of November 1980, we wrote to Captain Evans and offered to buy 50,000 of each of the five notes for £5,000 (10p / 20c for a set of five notes). We also offered to buy 100,000 sets at 9p (18c) a set, giving ourselves a 10% discount for quantity. On the 8th of December 1980, the Ministry of Defence wrote to us acknowledging our letter and telling us that they would advice us shortly. We subsequently heard, that not one other dealer in the United Kingdom had even bothered to respond to this offer for sale! It just goes to show you how ‘aggressive’ our competition was at that time… On the 19th of December 1980, Captain Evans wrote to us saying that the Ministry of Defence had agreed to our offer of £9,000 for 100,000 of each note. The letter reiterated that the notes had to be overstamped Cancelled before offering them for sale. That the cheque had to be made payable to ‘Director General of Defence Accounts’. ‘The Ministry for their part agree to’: ‘A) deliver the notes in sealed boxes to a place in London specified by you. and B) destroy all other notes in the same series.’ Because of the coming New Year and the pressure of work on our part, we did not take delivery or pay for the notes until March of 1981. Until that time, no one had bothered to look the notes up in any catalogue, after all, we were going to give them away, so what difference did it make? The notes were delivered and I contacted several dealers in wholesale material and offered them the notes in one go, at I believe, £25,000. Well if we could sell them and make a profit, then we could use something else for a Free Gift. It was only then that we decided, that it would be interesting to see just exactly what the notes catalogued. After all, who knows they might even be good… Although I use calculators and computers, innately I don’t trust them! Being rather old fashioned and conservative, the only thing that I totally trust is my brain, a pencil and a pad of paper. I tell you this, because when I did check the catalogue, I fell off my seat. Some but not all of the notes were listed in Pick and if you estimated the catalogue price of those not priced, you came up with $2,500 catalogue value per set of five notes. Now, when I put those numbers into my calculator, it came up with a stupid number! I remember throwing it against the wall and mumbling that it was stupid and shouting to someone to give me a calculator that worked and get it quickly. Damn modern machines! That calculator too was of course broken, can’t make modern machines like a paper and pencil. Finally in desperation, I took my trusty pencil and paper and worked it out, after all those two things can’t be broken… I sat there as I put the commas between the thousands, the hundred thousand, millions and hundreds of millions… The lot had a catalogue value of a quarter of a Billion Dollars!!! That’s right it catalogued $250,000,000.00! I immediately got on the phone and fax and told those dealers who I had mentioned the lot to, to forget it, it was no longer for sale at £25,000! No, forget it, I wanted to sit down for a while and contemplate what to do with my quarter of a Billion Dollar lot. Now, we started to get serious, now we had to check dealers price lists, auction catalogues, now we had to find out exactly what we had was actually worth… Of course, almost none of the notes had every been listed for sale, so we were no better off than before. I spoke to my good friend David Laties at Educational Coin Company and we talked over the possibilities. Because of the quantity it had to be a promotional house that could use these notes. I contacted American Express, Readers Digest and several other marketers, but it was too complicated for them. I think the catalogue value scared them off. In the end I suggest that perhaps David could contact Alan Shawn Feinstein about the notes. He did and surprise surprise, Alan was very interested in them. Now the question was what to price them at, but first we had to cancel them as we had agreed. I looked at the cost of having each note overprinted ‘Specimen’ and it was quite high, in fact higher than I wanted to go. So I contacted the Ministry of Defence and asked them if punching two holes in the notes would work for them. They agreed and we had our local printer just drill two holes in each unopened stack of notes. I believe that a small number of notes escaped without the hole cancellation, but I think it was a maximum of 25 sets. With all those notes around it was impossible to keep track of them all… On the 18th of March 1981, my company made an agreement with Alan S. Feinstein to sell him the 100,000 pieces of the Fourth issue 10 Shillings, listed at that time as Pick M35. He agreed to buy them for $1.00 each or a total of $100,000. Even with a commission to David, it was far more than the £25,000 that we were asking for the whole lot. I also gave him first option on the other four notes, the 1 Shilling 4th Series, 5 Shilling 2nd Series, 1 Shilling 3rd Series and 10 Shillings 3rd Series. The agreement stated that he had all the remaining Uncirculated notes anywhere in the world. That a second party would provide documentation of authenticity. That they would be delivered to Logan Airport in Boston. That I had bought the notes directly from the Ministry of Defence. I think I remember him also asking my inside leg measurement, but then again he asked for so many questions that perhaps I am mistaken on this last one. On the 21st of April 1981 he exercised his option to buy the other four notes, I guess his promotion was going very well…! He bought the other four notes for a total of $200,000, but held back $20,000 because my printer had drilled some notes with one hole and some notes with two holes. The second contract read… ‘Any written reference in any coin or banknote publication or catalog up until and including the date of issuance of the Fifth Edition of The Pick Paper Money Catalog, that states that the Pick Great Britain M-35 note which contains two holes for specimenization’ (wow what a word!), ‘shall result in Alan Shawn Feinstein not having to pay the remaining $20,000.00, which otherwise would have been due under his contract with Richard Lobel of 3/18/1981.’ If there has been no such reference, that $20,000.00 will be paid within thirty days after publication of the Pick Fifth Edition. Mr. Feinstein then offered the notes to his mailing list, at I believe $100 or $125 each. He did extremely well off the sale and I was happy, of course I would have been happier if he ever paid me the $20,000 that he still owes me! I sold the notes for a total of $300,000 less the $20,000 that is still owed on the sale and less the commission that I paid to David Laties. It was a very exciting sale, but unfortunately the worst was to come… In 1981 business was bad and all the money that I had earned had to be used to pay the bank back and in the end even that wasn’t enough. Now, I hope that gentleman from New England is happy. I had to dig out a lot of old boxes and comb through a lot of old files to find this information. On the other hand, I guess numismatics and researchers of British Military notes might just find it interesting. ============================================== Editorial ----------------------------------------------- Wow, what a great story on BAFSV, thanks Richard! Because of the length of the above story, the calendar has been removed from this issue. We have asked before and ask again now for comments and suggestions on the calendar feature. Tom Koch's reservation for the Fest makes 12 which is the number of Festers from Fest I. More importantly, three are new Festers! Get your reservations in! ============================================== Mail Call ----------------------------------------------- Dear Gram, Sign me up for the Mar 8-10 2002 MPCFest. Don't want to miss it and looks like this will be the best ever. Look forward to see all. Jack Lippincott Pittsburgh (via Fargo No. Dakota) ANA 2004 ================================================ Departments --------------------------------------------------- Calendar of events for Gramsters maintained by Howard Daniel, John Wilson and Gram staff, last updated August 17, 2001 ---------------------------------------------------- Calendar of events for Gramsters maintained by Howard Daniel, John Wilson and Gram staff, last updated August 17, 2001 ---------------------------------------------------- Calendar of events for Gramsters maintained by Howard Daniel lll, John & Nancy Wilson and Gram staff ---------------------------------------------------- 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 September 13 - 16, 2001 - Strasburg Currency and Stock & Bond Show, Lancaster __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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