British American Bank Note Co Archive Proofs

News: Welcome to the Canadian Paper Money Forum.

I am interested in the auction sales or private treaty sales of Canadian and US Proof notes from the British American Bank Note Co (BABNC) archives.

I am aware of the 12/1997 Spink Auction that included about 120 lots of Canadian proofs from the BABNC archives.
I am also aware of the 11/1990 Christie's Auction that included about 400 lots of Canadian proofs from the American Bank Note Co (ABNC) archives.

Were there other major auctions or private sales that included archive proofs, especially from the BABNC? I do not mean auctions that included a few proofs, but auctions that offered these archive proofs for the first time.

The 1989 Charlton catalogue lists many proofs from the BABNC. How did these get into the collector market?

The 1997 Spink Auction also included about 35 lots of US obsolete proofs from the BABNC archives.
Why did the BABNC archives have proofs from the ABNC?
Where there other auctions (or sales) of US obsolete proofs from the BABNC archives?

I'm not aware of any auction sales that were devoted exclusively to BABNC proofs and specimens. There was a "residue" sale of ABNCo archive world material in New York on June 5, 1991 and that sale included 38 lots of Canadian interest --- Barclays Bank, Bank of B.C., Bank of Commerce, Dominion Bank, Bank of Hamilton, Banque d'Hochelaga, Bank of Nova Scotia, Ontario Bank, Quebec Bank, Traders Bank, Union Bank, and others. Many of these lots contained 50 to 200 individual items! There was another ABNCo archive follow-up sale on December 9, 1991, and that contained another 150 or so lots of similar material.

There was a sale of Perkins Bacon Co. proofs on October 6, 1995, and that contained 132 lots of Canadian material. The large bulk comprised 19th century material from the Bank of British North America but there were 10 or so lots of Newfoundland (Commercial Bank & Union Bank) proofs.

Christies in London held a sale on October 3, 1985 that was devoted to Bradbury Wilkinson archive specimens but there were no Canadian items in that sale. I'm not aware of any Waterlow archive sales.

As always, all of the material in the above sales looked mighty mighty expensive at the time but it now looks so  ridiculously cheap! I guess I'll never learn ....

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Thank you for the above information.

I am still interested in finding out how proofs of both Canadian Chartered and US obsoletes came onto the market prior to about 1990. Both the 1989 Charlton and the 1989 Haxby catalogs list many proofs, before the major Christie and Spink auctions of the BABNC and ABNC archives in the 1990's.

When and how did these notes come onto the market?
Is it possible that this somehow occurred over a hundred years ago?

Bernie