My most recent set of notes has just been graded. Some nice results!!! Ill post some pics when I receive them back. Line Item Country Denom. Series Label Description Signatures Grade Comments 001 US $100 1922 Gold Certificate Speelman White 25 002 US $10 1901 Legal Tender Elliott White 30 EPQ Exceptional Paper Quality John Burke Back Plate #334 003 US $10 1880 Legal Tender Rosecrans Huston 55 EPQ Exceptional Paper Quality 004 US $1 1875 Legal Tender Allison Wyman 62 EPQ Exceptional Paper Quality
Fantastic notes! How did they make their way into your hands? Among Fr. 121 Bisons, the mules and non-mules are about equally distributed. So they aren't as rare as some other mules. Still, it's hard to find a mid-grade *PQ note as most are pressed or tampered with somehow. I'd love to see some photos once they arrive.
The notes are from my great grandfathers collection http://www.cointalk.com/threads/to-grade-or-not-to-grade.224344/ At this point ive had about 35 bills graded, 3 have been sold. Have been getting my large size nationals graded lately, have a bunch of them I havent posted yet either. Ill post a bunch once this set comes back, should be 2-3 days.
Most of the info ive found for identifying mules only covers some types, is there a resource with a full list of mule varieties? Im sure there are more hiding in the collection
In general terms, mules have face and back plates from different eras. Unfortunately there are only two distinct changes in the design to help us identify them. In the era of large size notes it was the position of the back plate number. Among small size notes, it was the size of the plate numbers. Although other mules exist based on the definition, they aren't really recognized because there aren't any ways to identify them without a cohesive list of production data. For large size notes, the position of back plate numbers changed when Frank White took over from John Burke as Treasurer. Therefore notes with signatures up to Elliot / Burke have back plates in one position and notes starting with Elliot / White have back plates in another. Only two signature combinations can be large size mules, and those are Elliot / White and Speelman / White. There were later officials that appeared on a few large size notes like Woods, Tate and Jones, but I don't believe any of those issues were mules. It can be a bit cumbersome to figure out which notes are mules without a reference showing the back plate positions. I think the Complete Catalog of Large Size Star Notes by Douglas Murray has some illustrations. One way is to pull up photos of notes from the Teehee/Burke variety and compare the back plate position to notes from the Speelman/White variety. I like to use HA.com for the high-res photos, since some plate numbers are hard to see... especially on gold certificates. If a note has the signatures of Elliot/White or Speelman/White but the back plate number is in the same position as a note from the Teehee/Burke note, then that note is a mule.
btw, just thought id share this with the forum. I dont know if PCGS does this, but when you sign up for PMG note submission, the PMG population data accessible is pulled directly from track and price, so in addition to ha.com you can get pricing information on recent sales of notes from PMG
here are some i recently got back, I am very curious as to the value of the FR2102L* From san fran, light green seal star note. Could anyone speculate as to value?
Track & Price shows two notes in the 25 grade: $122.95 and $152.50. But I can't tell if they're DGS or LGS, since they are mixed together in this program. One VF20 with L00000056* sold for $264.00. So probably $150 to $200 would be my guess.
