That's a great philosophy. In the interest of saving a few dollars I've gotten some real rags. When I upgrade those notes, there's almost no chance I'll get my initial investment when I try to sell - meaning that I've actually paid more in the aggregate than if I just bought the nice one to begin wtih
Got much to learn about bills and notes... my inexpensive, meaning, nothing premium commanding, couple of recent additions in the Canadian bill department:
It took longer than I expected to find a GEM example of a series 1995 $5 Boston replacement note. I finally found one and I couldn’t be happier.
1928A FR #1601 PMG 66: I like the different looks for the colored seals on the $1 bill and $1 SC. Liked the rich blue on this baby. Not sure if I got it on Ebay or HA.
Not a huge fan of the 65 grade, only because the centering issues take away From eye appeal, but never the less its a good looking note
My admittedly beginner/intermediate level of experience.....I see the 65's as a bit off-center with the margins if you look CLOSELY...but they don't SCREAM OUT AT YOU like you see on the 60-63's. Hell, I much prefer the AU-58's and below (like that PMG 45 Gold Certificate I posted) as if there are flaws, they are not discernable to the naked eye of the non-expert. Maybe the paper has "hidden wrinkles" or whatever a poster here showed with lighting at a side angle. But the bill looks better even though it may not GRADE better.
Are you saying you try and go for a higher grade or even down into the 50's (even if the overall quality is lower) to get better centering ?
Yes, one of the most important qualities in a note is both eye appeal and Eye distraction, uneven centering is an eye distraction and most 65,s fit This bill, everything else is good but the note is off center either side to side or up and down, when you drop down in to an A/U note, you can still have excellent centering with good eye appeal and the cost is less I always look for these especially in the rarer MPC issues.
What are the flaws that notes in the 50's have, if not centering issues ? And if they aren't that visible, why did the Grading Standards assign more weight to these invisible traits than visible ones like centering ?
1957A FR# 1620 PMG 66: A couple of low-serial numbers, 26 & 27, for the 1957A series. I actually bid on these away from home forgetting I had the same serial number range in another bill type. Had I known that, I probably wouldn't have bid. I now have a listing of all my collection (or at least those > $15) in my smartphone so I don't bid on something I already own or have as a comparable bill.
1928 $10 Gold Certificate PMG 45: I posted this in the Gold Certificate thread but some of you may not have seen it. I won it at auction and didn't understand why it only graded 45, thinking it was my own inexperience or I was missing something. I asked "Guess The Grade" before showing the PMG data and many CT posters thought that it was as high as PMG 65. Now I know that it's tough to accurately grade something from photos (even high res pics) as opposed to in-hand. Still, I was extremely surprised that some very knowledgeable coin and bill graders @ CT were off by 10-20 numbers on the grade. In fact, unless the bill has those wrinkles that are only visible from side-light (which I haven't seen yet), I'm still not sure why this GC scored only a PMG 45. As I stated in the GC Thread...it's not unique to this bill, I see lots of other GC's in the 40's and 50's that look much better (including margins) than the grade would indicate and some might pass for PMG 60's paper. Can't all be undergraded, so there must be something the graders are seeing in-hand that we can't from pics. Just not sure what it is. If anybody can see the flaws that knocked this thing down, please let us know.
I saw $2000 of new singles delivered into the bank this morning. The bundle on top started with serial 09113901 and I knew what that meant. Sure enough, the bundle on bottom started with this. My first 9/11 serial. Not NY, but I'll take it.