1954 $1 Inverted Back Design

News: Welcome to the Canadian Paper Money Forum.

The note is not a legitimate error.  Don't repeat my mistake!

The Authentic version, which is a very uncommon error (on '54 notes anyway) will normally have the back printed significantly off-center.  Presumably, the uncut sheet had different sized selvage areas on the top and bottom.  The fact that the margins line up perfectly should be looked at with extreme suspicion.

The Authentic version, which is a very uncommon error (on '54 notes anyway) will normally have the back printed significantly off-center.  Presumably, the uncut sheet had different sized selvage areas on the top and bottom.  The fact that the margins line up perfectly should be looked at with extreme suspicion.

Two examples of an authentic version (back and front).  Note that both banknotes are from the same sheet.

The Charlton Catalogue of Canadian Government Paper Money designates this error with the number BC-37a-E27-iii and references the serial prefix N/L.

The first reported public discovery of this 1954 $1 Inverted Back Design error note was in early 1963 by Mr. Ronald Paul Dore of Ottawa, ON.  He was a hotel manager and his eagle eyes discovered it in a local Ottawa tavern.  He was offered $200 for the note by a local dealer but being the astute business man that he was he turned down the offer and started a bidding war among rival dealers.

Shortly after his discovery the Bank of Canada confirmed the authenticity of his error note and stated "it is one of a sheet of 32 misprinted notes that went astray before they could be destroyed by mint officials."

A week later Mr. Orville McNeil of St. Catherines publicly announced discovering a similar error note that he had stored in a book for several months after a barber refused to take it as legal tender.  He came forward after reading the story in the Globe and Mail newspaper of Mr. Dore's discovery.

I have attached several news articles from 1963 about the discoveries.  They make for interesting reading almost 60 years later.

That's incredibly interesting. I remember reading about that famous error & reading about it somewhere a long time ago. I forget where it was though (could have been at a show).

Really cool to see 2 of them from the same sheet!

Anyway, thanks for sharing!

That's an amazing find!  Where in the world did you get those newspaper clippings?  $200 was a LOT of money back then for anything related to collectible paper money.

This is the note that I had in mind.  Sold for $10,000 in 2019.  It looks to be from the same sheet as well.  I wonder if it's the only Bank of Canada sheet of inverted backs to have ever escaped destruction?  That would make it a scarce error indeed.