My mom told me that my stepdad bought the grand canyon and yellowstone $2 notes. I just said I would like to see them but haven't gotten a chance yet. How did they alter the notes. Are they painted or do they have a sticker on them? On a side note I have a $2 note with a bunny sticker (for Easter) on it. I leave it on there for conversation and it looks pretty real at first glance.
Those are made by the "New England Mint", a private company. Basically, someone drew pretty pictures on real money and charges five times the value. I'd stay clear of them as much as possible. They're usually printed/painted on.
I've seen these in magazines. How is it legal for these companies to deface currency so obviously. I have written stuff on bills like phone numbers or addresses when I couldn't find anything else but it wasn't "intentional" or for profit.
They are overprinted $2 notes. It is probably a commercial digital printing process. Most likely they print on uncut sheets of currency purchased from the BEP, then trimmed and assembled in those presentation cards they are accompanied with. The New England Mint probably contracts a commercial printer for this unless the BEP has a service for printing these notes for the aftermarket(?). Notice they are careful not to obscure SNs, Federal Reserve and Treasury seals, and the other denominational and legal disclaimers on the note that this is legal tender and could be used. That is, the notes are not altered as currency and could be used to buy or pay for things. Due to the overprinting the notes are worthless to serious numismatic collectors and amount to a novelty item with a lot of flashy decorations marketed to people who may also know of the National Parks Quarters program from the US Mint which has been marketed to coin collectors. These overprinted $2 notes may even prove difficult to use as currency in real world transactions since many people already think $2 notes are fake. The general public are likely to find these decorated notes just more bogus play money or counterfeits, as they already discount less commonly seen currency denominations to be such anyway. New England Mint
Notice they are careful not to obscure the SNs, Federal Reserve and Treasury seals, and the other denominational and legal disclaimers on the note that this is legal tender. That is, the notes are effectively not altered as currency and could be used to buy or pay for things.
No, because they didn't deface the aspects that make this legal tender as I noted. Technically, they have only altered the areas around these and not obscured the note from legal use. Companies like this doing such a thing will have consulted with their legal advisers and reviewed the terms of legally doing this without violation due to defacement.
Also, I can't speak to this particular set of notes, but typically the added design elements on notes like this are in the form of a sticker, attached with a post-it-note type of adhesive, so that it's all totally removable without harm to the original note. Some years ago, the Treasury actually did threaten to prosecute some company that was hawking "Santa dollars" with an image of Santa Claus pasted over George Washington, and the removable sticker was the compromise that got that company out of hot water....
I was thinking that these would have to be overprinted due to the faded/transparent edges of the color additions. Perhaps they are a sticker, but if they are, it would be in a rather expensive transparent adhesive stock and require fairly decent registration as it buts right up to the elements of the note they tried not to cover up. It just seems printing would be easier than trying to align stickers in this case, with so many elements to add as opposed to the Santa Claus dollar which was only applied over the central vignette. Maybe the OP can tell us if it's a sticker or not when he next reads this thread.
That would be helpful, yes. Meanwhile, note that the images on the website you linked are Photoshopped anyway: there are bills of at least three different designs with the serial number F71235101A.
For marketing purposes who ever handled web design, the TV spots airing and any other printed collateral materials related to selling these items, the graphic designer likely skimped on scanning multiple unique notes with unique SNs for multiple sku items that they needed to list. Since every note will be unique and they can't scan them all, one example note/SN was used simply applying the various pieces of overprint art to each different item. The same thing was done in the different arrangement of example notes, some individual and others fanned out, dare I call it a specimen note. This quickly allows them to finish these pieces of art to fill out their product line and save the time/effort of creating unique catalog images of each different product. It was just as easy for them to take the base layer, the $2 note, add the different art layers over that same note and create the catalog image files for marketing purposes. The art itself that is printed or adhered to the actual notes was likely originally created entirely in a graphics editing software program, like Photoshop, based on altering photos of the Parks to fit the areas of the note where image was added. The entire venture is a Photoshop creation. Many coin and bullion web sites will offer a representative image of the product being ordered, but not the exact item you will receive, it's pretty common and this is similar, but a bit more noticeable to the collector of paper notes keen on spotting unique SNs.
