I hope this link works, what an interesting find. http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/202833/
A great little story. I'm going to have to track the outcome of this. Well I hope everything works out well for both parties in this case ,,,because something like this does belong in a musuem where it can be protected for ever. Maybe the state should offer him a very nice sum of money for this plate,,,they may even save themselfs some tax dollars by not having to drag this into the court system.
Questions, do they have records of the disposition of every other printing plate? Most of them? Any of them? If they don't have records of what happened to them how can they say they weren't disposed of? Do they have any records paying an engraver to produce the plate? Did their contract with the printer specify who would own the plates? Often times printers were paid to produce currency, and inorder to do so they created printing plates. The plates belonged to the printer. This tends to still be the way it is when private firms create money for governments, the printing firm owns the plates, not the customer. Case in point is all the material recently coming out of the American Bank Note archives. Some of those plates and printing rolls were used to create state notes. Some were used to create Federal Government notes. But the ABC retained ownership and today the material they have sold off is now owned by the collectors that bought it.
