Weird Banknote Story

My Grandfather accumulated banknotes. He didn't actually collect them, he accumulated them. One of my dad's cousins (my grandfather's nephew) was a Doctor of Agriculture, working for the Rockefeller Foundation. He was constantly on the go, flying here, flying there, all over the world.

Whenever he went to a different country, he would send my Grandfather a postcard, and would also pick up a piece of the local currency to bring him.

One day, my Grandfather showed me his accumulation. I already collected stamps, but when I saw these banknotes, I decided then and there that they would be something else nice to collect.

On our next trip to Winnipeg (at the time, we lived four hours away), I discovered that one of the downtown department stores actually had a Stamp and Coin department, and I was checking it out when I saw these packages of 10 foreign notes for $3.98. I bought five different assortments, and voila!, instant collection.

Over time, I added to my collection, enrolling in an approval service from a dealer in Toronto named Duhamel. One of the notes I bought from him was this Five Sucres note from Ecuador:



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My Grandfather and I would give each other our duplicates whenever we had any. My collection got bigger and bigger, as I identified different sources of notes. I bought notes that I had seen copies of in his collection when I found them for sale, and many others.

After my Grandfather's death, my Grandmother gave me my Grandfather's collection, because she knew that I would appreciate it and take care of it. I knew there would be some duplication because I had given him some of the notes and vice versa, but I figured that that was okay because this way I could display both sides, using the duplicate notes.

As I have mentioned, one of the notes he had that I remembered and later bought from a dealer was an Ecudorian Five Sucres note. This is the one he had:


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I was comparing the signatures and dates on the duplicate notes to see whether they actually were the same, when I realized something -- they were both in sequence.

Now what were the chances of that ever happening?

Two notes -- one he got from his nephew who got it in Ecuador, one I bought four or so years later from a dealer in Toronto -- both in sequence, with the same series number...now how strange is that?


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