Let's Take A Look At Proofs

Given the proximity in time and space, when it came time to have some notes prepared I suspect that the bankers at Manchester followed the lead of the bankers at Ypsi and contracted with the same bank note company, RWH&Co, to do their notes. Wouldn't you suppose that the RWH salesman influenced their decision to use some of the same portrait vignettes too? Consider:




As we saw above the $5 Ypsi note had vignettes of Jackson, Franklin, Washington, and Lafayette (left to right). I am sure it is not coincidental in the least that at Manchester the $1 bore Franklin, the $2 bore Washington, and as we see here, the $3 bore Lafayette, and that these are identically the same stock vignettes as appeared on the Ypsilanti note. But in this thread our primary interest was in finding a note with a portrait of Jackson, which is how the Ypsi $5 came up in the first place. If you have a more complete holding (I just have the first three) can you tell us whether any of the notes at Manchester bore the Jackson vignette we see at Ypsilanti?





It sounds like you and I are cut from the same cloth. I started to grieve for the passing of the EPS and its journal even before its final issue was delivered to my mailbox. It allowed for greater connections with students of paper money and the art of engraving than we have enjoyed since its day. More than nostalgia is at play when I say that we miss the likes of Julian Blanchard, Glenn Jackson, George Brett and a host of others who studied this material. Their work is hard to duplicate. It was Brett in the final issue of the EPJ that called attention to Siegel sale 747, lot 1150, in 1993 in which the original Travers papers appeared on the market for the first time. The whole bunch sold to Jack Rosenthal for $1250 and he turned them over to Wilson Hulme at the Smithsonian in the formative days of the NPM. Today we are only beginning to mine the riches of that archive, and in many ways this thread owes its existence to that. Mark Tomasko and the late Gene Hessler carried on the tradition for paper money, but neither ever got into philatelic journals much. Yet a bridge might revitalize interest in the artistic side of the material for all of us. Maybe a bunch of us should get together and resurrect an online version of the EPS.

"Maybe a bunch of us should get together and resurrect an online version of the EPS."

Wouldn't that be something! I agree there needs to be some venue for scholars of banknote material across all interests -- philately, paper money, scripophily and related ephemera. I came to the Essay-Proof Journal after its demise, but became an avid reader of all the back issues I could find. Imagine how much could have been written as the American Bank Note Archives auctions rolled out.

As to the fourth note in the Bank of Manchester set, I'm afraid the $10 does not feature Jackson -- nor a cow for that matter. This one has a maiden and a horse. The portrait frame looks quite similar, however.

I was not aware that Gene Hessler had died - when did that happen?

I think I got that wrong, Greg. I thought I had heard that over a year ago, but an online check shows him getting a lifetime achievement award in 2014, and no notice of anyone passing.

So the rumors of his death are much exaggerated. Mea culpa!




Are you still trying to pick up the issues? I have a full run and a few extras. Don't know how far along with all that you might be.




Wouldn't you know they'd shy away from the Chief Executive. Jackson went out of office in March 1837, so he was in office when the notes at Ypsilanti came out, but had just gone out of office when the notes at Manchester came into being. It figures.

As for the maiden, with all that water something tells me she is an allegorical figure, a sea nymph perhaps.

Essayk, I sent you an email. Hopefully its not in your junk folder.

Yes, I got it Greg, but replies via the system don't reach their destinations from me for some reason. (I am suspicious that either my ISP or my mail agent is being filtered out by the system.) Something in the header is getting it tossed. But I have not usually remembered to ask intended recipients to check their spam folders. Be all that as it may, without a direct email address in the message, I am not able to reply privately.

I will keep my eye out for my loose EPJs, which are somewhere around here.

As for hijacking the thread, okay, maybe pursuing the chat about the Essay-Proof Society might be off topic, and if so we can start another thread for that, for the handful that might be interested. But the chat about imagery on the paper money can be very germane to the subject. Please don't think of that as a hijack of the thread.

When I started this thread it was intended to expose readers to the kinds of issues and answers that come up in a study of proofs, starting with some sense of what they are understood to be in the parlance of US philatelic students in particular. But to me, proofs relate most directly to stamp design, and that is a large topic worthy of deeper reflection and consideration by all who enjoy the collecting of these miniature art pieces.

For me the design question considers not only how an object looks, but also how it got that way, who did it, and why. All of that forms the context in which a proof "proves" the fitness of something. The paper money made by the same people who made the stamps can open us up to the bigger picture, and I'm all for that.

I have a great many vignette and portrait proofs, put out by Bureau of Engraving & Printing as well as various bank note companies. Not many are specifically related to philately, but there are a few. I try to find matching usages when possible. Here are three BEP proofs, along with their matching taxpaid revenues. You won't find these large size revenues in the Scott catalog, but they do show up in some of the Springer catalogs.

I really like this thread and would like to see it continue, so I'm going to throw another related question out there. If it seems more appropriate for a spin-off thread, have at it.

Many moons ago I acquired a short set of three 1¢ "specimen" officials from different government branches. I'm sure I didn't pay much for these at the time, but I've always been curious about how they fit into the spectrum. Are they considered a type of proof? Or were they simply examples from a regular print run, provided as sample sets. Were these sold to the public? And lastly, though this seems unlikely, did any specimens ever slip past into postal use?

These are considered a special printing; they are listed in the officials section of the Scott Specialized.
All the used examples I have seen have fake cancels and are on types where the specimen in fairly inexpensive and fairly common but the used ordinary stamp is scarce. They are on thin paper without gum, which makes it relatively easy to do. These were not very highly thought of back in the day and the used stamps were.

I'm popping in to say I've enjoyed reading this thread even though I can't add any thing to the topic.

I communicated via email with Gene Hessler back in 2015 when I was searching for a copies of The Engraver's Line and also The International Engraver's Line.

-MV

I found this in a box of stamps last year. Always wondered if it was a photographic approval proof, though it is a photostat, not a photograph (it has half tone dots).

I guess I'll never know.




Shown next to the real thing.

Just a little note to essayk and MeadowviewCollector -- Gene Hessler is indeed alive and well! I swapped a couple emails with him just today. He says he's approaching 88 and so isn't doing the research and writing much anymore. But he connected me with another friend and expert that may be able to help provide some information for an article I'm writing. Pretty neat to correspond with one of the icons in this field!