Misprinted one dollar bill

Hi all! My mom recently gave me a one dollar bill that she had in her possession since 1976. If you see the attached pic you will see that both seals on the front of the bill are missing. Could this be a misprint or deliberately altered? Is it is a misprint, can someone give me an approx. value? Thanks.....

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

First off, welcome.

Not to mention the serial numbers, too!

Either the inking for that part of the process was botched, or something got in the way of the sheet (or at least part of it) during that step.

 

I'm not sure how it could be missing the "ONE"... these are the ones I'm familar with:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Federal-R...98?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item51a0421316

 

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's very likely to have been tampered with.

The word "ONE", the series (year) and signatures are all part of the face plate design. They are not printed separately. For the face to be printed in this way, the face plate design would have to have been botched dramatically. Not impossible, but very unlikely.

This is what a note with missing overprint should look like:



Look for evidence of strong paper wear in the areas where the overprint should be, under magnification. That should give you enough info to make the call.

 

I'm digging the PCGS typo "Collectoin".

 

Thanks for everyone's info! There seems to be "excessive" wear in the areas of the missing seals, which certainly supports doubt.....

 

Good point, jloring and funkee - I stand corrected. Are these really worth so much that it pays for somebody to fake one?

 

Certified errors in high grade can be valuable. Perhaps a few hundred dollars at the most for missing overprint on common notes. But because there is so much potential for doctoring these kinds of errors, there is not much money to be made on raw ungraded notes. Buyers won't pay a lot just due to risk.

I've learned that lesson a few times. I sent something in for grading, being rather confident it was an error. Then it comes back with a Net or Apparent grade.

In this case, someone probably used chemicals and a pencil eraser to do the trick.

To the OP, try shining a black light on it. Some chemicals will leave a nice glow under a black light.