Officially, it is classified as “an obstructed printing error with retained obstruction.” In reality, it appears to be a simple slip-up.
A US$20 banknote that had a sticker from a bunch of bananas attached to it before it was overprinted with security numbering is now up for auction at a Texas dealer, the rare error elevating its worth to US$57,500, almost 3,000 times its face value.
The so-called Del Monte banknote is unusual, and so valuable, because the sticker is still affixed and clearly shows a serial number and US Department of the Treasury seal printed over it, Heritage Auctions of Dallas said.
“Most obstructions fall off shortly after printing, leaving behind a blank area of paper lacking the design, but errors with objects that ‘stick’ to the note and enter circulation are very rare,” a description of the lot on the seller’s Web site said.
“When this note was printed at the Fort Worth western currency facility, it went through the first and second printings normally before the Del Monte sticker found its way onto the surface,” the seller said, describing the misprint as “one of the greatest paper money errors in history.”
Bidding on the banknote, from the US treasury’s 1996 design series and released into circulation in 2004, is to end on Friday. As of Sunday afternoon, the highest bid was US$57,500, the Web site said.
That would actually cost the bidder more than US$69,000, including a buyer’s premium.
The banknote sold at auction in 2006, for more than US$25,000. Two years earlier it was “a bargain” at US$10,000, when it was sold on eBay by a student in Ohio who received it as part of an ATM withdrawal.
All US banknotes produced since 1968 go through three print stages, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP), which manufactures paper money for the US treasury, says on its Web site.
The colorful banana sticker, bearing the words “Ecuador Del Monte Quality” and the number #4011, would have been added after the first two stages, printing the front and back of the note, but before the final print that added the security logo and individual identification detail.
Because of this, “most would conjecture that this error note was no accident and probably the result of some very bored or creative BEP employee,” Heritage said.
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