The 1878 $1 Dominion Lettered Border Montreal Series C bank notes are divided into two sub-varities. The back imprint is either “British American Bank Note Co. Montreal” (BABN-Mtl) or …Ottawa (BABN-Ott). This change occurred because the printer moved its head office from Montreal to Ottawa. After a considerable amount of research, these varieties were published by CPMS in 1999. A detailed update of this sub-variety will be published in a future CPMS Journal.
BABN-Mtl notes are hard to find and as scarce as Montreal Scalloped border notes! The CPMS registry identifies 30 29 BABN-Mtl notes with only 20 of these confirmed and the remaining 10 9 notes not yet verified by images.
Many other 1878 Montreal Series C bank notes are mistakenly identified as BABN-Mtl. This mistake has been observed by TPGs, auctions, resellers, and dealers at shows.
The best way to confirm Series C BABN-Mtl notes is to simply look at the back of them. The following image is very straight forward – if you find the word Ottawa on the back, it is the common BABN-Ott.
JBN
