Yes, they are. I don't collect souvenir cards anymore and didn't realize these were a different color than ones being sold currently. It didn't show up good on the scan but the area around Liberty is an orangish-yellow. I have been trying to liquidate my old souvenir cards on Ebay for several months. If anyone is interested you can find them under my name there hrc_guy. Mostly USPS and UN cards left and a few BEP.
At the Whitman show I always stop by the Mint demonstration booth to visit Mike Bean, Plate Printer (retired), and to buy some of his current offerings and to enter the limited edition souvenir card raffle (which I've never won in more then twenty years of attending this show.) This year he was selling a very interesting five print edition of early Abraham Lincoln prints from photo engraved plates he bought at an auction sight unseen They were in a crate with a bunch of other plates. They were printed using high grade "wet" paper stock, intaglio printing on a very old spider press. Three of the five Lincoln cards (need to rescan the other two cards) and a Robt E Lee card. I asked Mike to sign the prints which he did. Also bought several different note cards with different vignettes on them.
Thanks. I don't know if Mike will sell sets outside of shows. His email address: plateprinter@gmail.com The following are covers for note cards Mike printed. I think they are beautifully done.
Nice! I have most of the last set of engravings, used on different cards. Except for the locomotive. I need to figure out how to get a copy of that one!
Thanks. For me , the locomotive and anchor are new. I really enjoy talking with Mike about his work. He's so enthusiastic. He was genuinely impressed when I asked him to sign the Lincoln prints. I attended a presentation by Edmund C. Moy, Mint Director, retired and John M. Mercanti, Chief Engraver, retired. I learned a lot about the workings of the Mint and how the 2009 UHR coin came to be including the political resistance to the original saint gaudens double eagle. Very interesting freewheeling discussion. Unfortunately, there were only nine attendees in the room! The rest were support staff. Mike
gsalexan: The locomotive your missing was on the engraving for the Florida United Numismatics 58th Annual Convention. There is a bonus of two other locomotive engravings on the certificate as well. The raffle item featured a Eagle but I noticed there is a train with locomotive in the background. I was able to win and purchase both these prints. Sorry they are side ways. It was the only way they fit in my scanner. I should have removed them from the cellophane envelopes besides. The glare came from them as well.
Those are both great cards! Can you tell me who was selling the train card? Was it a private organization?
They were both obtained at the convention. The card with the three vignettes, Michael Bean sold at his both during show hours. These didn't appear to be limited in quantity. Perhaps as you suggested, contact him to see if he still has any available. The single vignette was a free raffle item limited to 100 pieces. Mine was number eleven, noted on the signature line in the scan.
I wrote to Mike Bean for information on that FUN card with the trains and he was kind enough to send me one! It arrived today along with two other locomotive cards. The print quality of these engravings is superb! He also mentioned that the FUN 2014 card will feature trolley, harvest and eagle vignettes. I think I may have seen a couple of these before, but I hope I'm surprised by some new ones.
They're are really nice cards, Greg. Congratulations! Here's a picture I took of Mike at the Baltimore Whitman show probably three or four years ago. His assistant, Larry, is in the background.
Greg; I'll be at the show next month. I would be happy to pick up anything for you if you are not planning to attend. Maybe the new FUN engraving? Just let me know.
Cool! Thanks for the offer. I'd definitely like to pick up the FUN card. I really need to get to this show sometime, it's just such a long way from the West Coast. Is it a good show for paper money?
Some dealers come with a good mix of currency but they don't have a special area for it. They do for foreign and ancient coins, which leads visitors to think more about their coin needs than anything else. I go to a paper currency show in the spring near the Chicago airport. It's called the Chicago Paper Money Exposition. It's actually in Rosemont Illinois. It seems to have a good inventory of both foreign and U.S. currency. It has a smaller bourse floor than the FUN Show, but may be better for paper currency collectors.
Time for a bump on this thread. Here's an early card that I don't think has been posted yet -- B7, issued in 1970, the second year the BEP officially put out souvenir cards. This is an interesting one, because the Bureau had to use a variety of plates to create this collage. There are eight notes depicted here. Can you identify them all? See how many you can get before referring to your catalog.
Thought I'd post a couple more early BEP cards you may not have seen. B2 has some nice background on the jackass notes. And B56 shows off the detail on the 1882 $100 brown back.
I joyfully stumbled on a very early (forerunner) souvenir card for $10 yesterday at a postcard show. It doesn't have a BEP indicia, but I recognized it as a Bureau engraving. This battleship was printed both on cards and on silk handkerchiefs, as souvenirs at a numerous world's fairs from the 1907 Jamestown Exposition to the 1926 Sesquicentennial Expo. This one was originally part of a set from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Expo in San Francisco. Usually the Bureau would include the name of the expo on the card (not in this case) and retitle the ship to suit the event. For the Jamestown card, it was the USS Virginia. I believe the USS Nebraska was in port for the San Francisco fair, hence the title of this particular card. In my 35+ years of collecting this is the first time I've seen one of these outside of photos, so the price was right, even with minor scuffs and dings. And a beautiful engraving.
I bought this a few years back and had it framed. It's the Shield of Arms for every state in the Union.
Thanks for including it in this thread. Someday I'll go for one of these, not sure which color I like best though. It's a very busy group of images clustered together!
Here's a new piece I can add to this old thread of mine(ours)... and it's a bit of a change from U.S. BEP-type cards. Enjoy! [These are not scans, just photos.] The 2014 25th Annual TICC Official Souvenir Card (JNDA): Featured note: Vignette close-up: Sugawara no Michizane [Wikipedia.org] Japanese Wikipedia page: 菅原道真 Information: Kitano Ten Mangu (English), Kyoto, Japan This souvenir card's numbered, matching envelope from the National Printing Bureau, Japan (English):