20 years ago, I had a collectables shop in the centre of Melbourne where I dealt in phonecards, coins, and banknotes. It was a fun time
Collecting Australian Decimal Banknotes-a Rare Find
20 years ago, I had a collectables shop in the centre of Melbourne where I dealt in phonecards, coins, and banknotes. It was a fun time and during the 5 years I ran the business I travelled to Japan each year just before Christmas to buy Japanese thematic phonecards for stock. Although I started out trading in phonecards, banknotes were added around 1998 when the Australian Phonecard market tapered off although the Japanese thematic market was strong. Thematic collecting is along a theme such as Coca-Cola related or Disney for example. Many beautiful cards exist in the Japanese area and they made for a pleasant hobby.
I did start out as a collector but when deciding to become a dealer I had to change my mindset so that I saw all my collection as part of the trading stock. I found I did not lose any of the collector interest and often said all my stock was now my collection!
So around 2000 my shop rent was about to triple, and I decided to move my business online and slowly exit the industry. I sold most of my trading stock through the Melbourne auction houses and was left with odds and ends. The best Australian banknotes I had were retained and sold privately over the next year-mainly pre-decimal banknotes and they were very sought after at the time. The notes I was left with were the decimal collection which was not as popular at that time and so I just left that particular album on the shelf so to speak.
Moving house a year ago led me to have to decide what to keep or throw out from the mass of stuff one ends up with in ones house over time and when I picked up that particular album, and thinking they were basically only worth their face value I tossed up whether to just spend them in shops or try to sell some on eBay to get a few dollars more for them than their face value.
I listed one each of the $50 notes, $20 notes, and some of the $10 notes I had. Australian banknotes are collected by their signature combinations. Each note had two signatures, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, and another signature. Most collectors wanted one of each signature combination.
This early Pre-decimal Australian Banknote is from 1928 and its condition described as Very Fine. Very Fine means it has obvious circulation defects such as folds, creases, maybe even some ingrained dirt
I was conservative with my eBay starting prices. I listed them to start at half the price from the year 2000 and a Buy it Now price equal to the retail price from the year 2000. I thought that like in the year 2000, they might be too common to sell easily so was even at old prices not expecting to sell them quickly if at all.
To my surprise, they all sold but one in particular sold instantly when someone bought it as a Buy it Now price and then asked me if I had anymore similar to that. What he was looking for were the first or last prefix group in each signature combination. For example, the first note in a new signature pair might start with ARF followed by a row of zeros. Each note then went up in consecutive numbers until they started on the next three letter group. Sometimes one of these groups was a very small number printed since the two people on the signatures might have changed so they would stop at whatever number they had at that time and change to the new signature pairs, although they continued with the same three letter group.
Now back in the year 2000, this form of collecting had just started and quite frankly, I thought as a dealer that it was a bit of a gimmick at the time with limited numbers actually collecting these types of notes. Anyway, fast forward to 20 years later and it seems that there was now a firm base of collectors for these notes.
So, when the collector asked me about others, I initially told him I had one more of the one he bought and offered it to him at the same price which he quickly snapped up.
He then asked me if I had any other first or last prefix notes available so I told him I would have a look. A google search to identify which letter groups were the first and last in each signature pair and I started looking through my notes.
Other than the one he bought which was a $10 note, I could only find one in the $10 notes, but I did locate 3 different ones in the $1 range. Now usually the lower denomination notes are always easier to find since more are bought at the time by collectors.
In this case however, and probably because the collector base was only just starting in this area when I obtained the note it was not collected by anyone else at the time. Pure chance that I ended up with one of those notes and since I was a dealer, it was stored safely. If the note had turned up in someones chest of drawers at home, it would probably have been creased all over and spent. Eventually finding its way back to the bank where it would have been taken out of circulation and destroyed.
I sent him the list of these notes and over the next few weeks whilst exploring their possible value we communicated at length and as he was a long time collector and had done much research in this area he supplied me with a lot of information on historical prices from when these type of notes turned up for sale-usually they sold at auction since they were so rare. One in particular was of interest to the collector and after obtaining valuations of the notes from research and contacting banknote dealers who made offers I decided to offer it to the original collector since he had been so helpful with information bringing me up to speed after a 20 year break from the industry.
We both knew the rarity of the note-there have been less than 10 seen in collectors’ hands so not many people will have one in their collection and he offered a figure which was accepted. The note was sold.
A windfall for me after sitting on a shelf for 20 years and a very very lucky find for the collector who would now have the best example-nearly perfect condition, of a note which perhaps has only 10 known copies of left in existence.
And the sale price? The collector gives permission to say that it sold for $3750.
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