Is this one legit? http://www.ebay.com/itm/221730717031 I would imagine that anything worth more than $20 (?) has the potential to be counterfeited. And no, I don't believe for a minute that it is a "rare note". I want this specific year from Ukraine for a family member. Thanks.
My Standard Catalog says. Dated 1918 Prefix Letters AO (Issued in Odessa) Serial # from 210 (Issued by Gen.Denikin and labeled as false by the Ukranian Government. VG$1 VF$3 UNC$7.50 Serial # to 209 are not false and are the same value.
Thanks @daveydempsey. So if I'm interpreting you correctly here, the Standard Catalog says it's a fake issued by some Russian General and the year is wrong, too?
Just filling in another piece of relevant text from SCWPM (I know nothing other than just reading the text): "During the period of independence 1917-1920, Ukraine issued its own currency in Karbovanets denominations under the Central Rada of social-democrats (#1-11) and in Hryvnia denominations during the monarchy of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky (#12-19 and #29-34)." That note is listed as P-6b. It sounds like there's some interesting background behind this series of notes, and if the story went with the gift, I see no reason this note wouldn't be a part of it. Perhaps adding P-6a, the earlier serial #, would round things out.
I do not think that the note is fake as in counterfeit. I think the listing in the catalog simply means that series 210 and above were issued by someone who did not have the authority to do so and the government was not going to recognize them because of that.
Ah. Re-reading it just now, that makes sense. So it *has* to be legit... who would counterfeit a "counterfeit" ;-)
I'm no expert on Ukrainian banknotes, but the cheap paper looks right for the time. Also, the seller sells tons of banknotes from regimes that collapsed at low prices. Basically, everything makes sense to me that this would be a legitimate note. The reason why a hundred year old banknote would be so cheap is that the Soviets won the war, so these notes were worth essentially nothing by 1920. Looking a bit further, this article from Wikipedia tells a bit about General Denikin who sort of split off from other Ukrainian national groups fighting against the Soviets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_karbovanets "After occupation of Odessa by military units of Denikin's Army in spring, 1919, the printing house of Odessa continued printing bank-notes of 50 karbovanets. The Ukrainian Government was indignant and proclaimed money issued by the Denikinists to be false (series AO, numbers 210 and above)."
How often are old foreign notes counterfeited? Just about never. And there is a good reason. It costs good money to get set up to produce reasonably convincing counterfeit banknotes. So it is not worth printing just one or a dozen or a hundred. Not a problem if you produce ten thousand current notes, there are a huge number of real ones around already,so the fakes blend in. Start producing large numbers of long obsolete notes and the relatively small collector market very soon notices that there is a flood of whatever the fake copied on the market and at least the price plummets, at best someone publishes the diagnostic signs of the fake notes and the market cleans itself up. The situation would be similar to that which collectors would be familiar with, when a hoard of old notes is discovered in some dusty valut and for a while note ZZZ becomes common until the market soaks up the available numbers and business as usual resumes. Faking high value notes is similarly not really worth the time, as these get very careful scrutiny from buyers, unlike notes in circulation, and the costs to produce anything but an obvious forgery are high. Doctoring a genuine note is easier and cheaper and not uncommon. In the past there have been famous forgeries of what are now obsolete notes, (See Operation Bernhardt) but in general contemporary forgeries of old notes are as interesting and usually rarer than the real notes. General Deniken's notes were just about as 'authorised' as any of the hundreds of note issues in the Russian area during the immediate post revolution period. If you had a big gang, a few guns and a printing press you issued 'money'. It was just a cruder version of all the banknote issuers today.
It is imperative that I get one from 1919. @daveydempsey , your catalog lists it as 1918. I'm assuming that the catalog is correct and the eBay seller is in error. What serial numbers would I be looking for to ensure that it is indeed a 1919 and not some other year?
There are non in my catalog dated 1919. It says State Treasury Notes 1918 (ND) Issue. No other dates are shown, I don`t know what ND means. Hope this helps.
ND means No Date (the note has no printed date) so you just have to go by the historical records of the events surrounding the issue.
