Holy cow read this,
Reg
Arizona burglar stumbles on oddball Canadian cash
Old $4 bills likely worth far more than their face value
BY RANDY BOSWELL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICEJANUARY 31, 2010
An Arizona burglar got more -- and less -- than he bargained for this month after breaking into a home and stealing a metal box filled with cash, including a number of Canadian $4 bills from the early 1900s.
That's right -- $4.
Perhaps realizing the throwback Canuck bucks couldn't be readily spent in the U.S. on smokes or an iPod without arousing suspicion -- especially those bills in a denomination discontinued 99 years ago -- the male suspect tried to sell the old money to a rare-coin dealer in Flagstaff, Ariz.
No dice, thanks to a wary specialist on duty at American Bullion and Coin.
The would-be seller was turned away and police were notified.
"Somebody's got those bills in town, and it's going to be hard for them to get rid of them," numismatist Trevan Woolbright told the Arizona Daily Sun.
Flagstaff police Det. David Holyfield said he couldn't discuss how many bank notes were stolen or how much they might be worth. But he did say the thief was probably unaware he had stumbled on a collector's cache of historic bank notes from Canada.
"I don't think they had any idea what they'd got hold of," he told Canwest News Service.
If the burglar had been hoping for a nice wad of greenbacks for some pricey purchases, he was out of luck. But the bills in his possession are worth considerably more -- in fact, up to 1,000 times more -- than their face value.
Several of the stolen specimens -- a set of green-hued, Dominion of Canada four-dollar bills printed in 1900 -- are sought after by collectors because of their relative rarity and an unusual error on the front-side engraving.
While the back of the bill shows a classic image of Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the front mistakenly depicts the U.S. shipping locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
The printer was supposed to have placed an image of the Canadian locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., on the other side of the border, between portraits of the country's turn-of-the-century governor general -- the Earl of Minto -- and his wife, Mary, Lady Minto.
Subsequent printings of the $4 bill corrected the problem, so the erroneous 1900 lot -- including the ones that would be stolen a century later in Flagstaff -- instantly became more valuable as collector items.
Then, in 1911, the $4 denomination was scrapped altogether by the Canadian government.
Today, a crisp $4 bill from 1900 could fetch $4,000 or more at auction.
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist
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