I got this at a bank on Thursday. I was picking up a box of half dollars. The teller was hanging on to this note for me, since she knows I am a collector. I am guessing I know the answer, but wanted to throw this out for an opinion anyway. It has a couple of marker markings on the front, where someone was testing it. Someone has also written on the back of it. I am thinking it is woth zero over face, but I bought it from the teller since she was nice enough to hold on to it and think of me. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Do those black markings look like actual sharpie? If they're just markings from a counterfeit pen they will fade and become transparent. Unfortunately, they look like sharpie markings from the image... Some tellers have been known to mistakenly use a sharpie before realizing they weren't using the "correct" pen (which doesn't even work on notes this old to begin with!!!). The counterfeit "pen" doesn't work on notes made before around 1960 give or take due to differences in the paper that notes were made from back then. It says this right on the pen packaging but 95% of tellers/cashiers don't even bother to read this information to begin with. This leads to hundreds of cases each year where perfectly good and collectible notes from the 1950s or before are thought to be counterfeit and sent off to the Secret Service only to be returned as genuine. Often, the word genuine or some variation of it is written right on the note in pen by the Secret Service "expert" who examined the note so such notes are in effect ruined.
Let us know if the marks fade in a few days. I once picked up a 1934 $10 note from the bank with about 10 counterfeit pen marks on it. A week later, I couldn't tell that it had ever been marked up.
Well.... I haven't looked it up in my paper book, but marks or not, doesn't mean it's got much of a premium. I got a 1934 series hundred from a teller not long ago. Tried to sell it on ebay at a price I'd break even as a minimum bid, twice. Two seven day auctions. Never got a bid, so I took it back to a bank. Again, I don't remember the issuing bank and such, but just because its a 1934 series doesn't mean it's worth much over face.
Thanks, everyone. The marks are still there. I will post an update in a couple of days. I think I will keep it for now, at least until I need the cash!
