u/historyinawallet

Was reading up on the design of the UK's polymer £50 note and the backstory is a lot more loaded than "famous scientist on money."

Alan Turing, codebreaker, founder of theoretical computer science was convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952 for being gay (homosexuality was illegal in England and Wales until 1967). Instead of prison he was given a choice: prison or hormone treatment, i.e. chemical castration. He chose the treatment. He died in 1954; the inquest ruled it suicide, though some historians have disputed that verdict since. The UK didn't apologize until 2009 (PM Gordon Brown), didn't pardon him individually until 2013 (royal prerogative of mercy), and didn't pardon the roughly 49,000 other men convicted under similar historical laws until the "Alan Turing law" in 2017.

My dad gave me this 1991 NBA Hoops Chicago Bulls card, and I thought it was a really cool piece to add to the collection.

It’s graded PSA 7, but I’m honestly not sure what it’s worth. I’m not really planning on selling it either way — I’ll be holding onto it because it was a gift from my dad and that makes it worth more to me.

Any Bulls/NBA card collectors know anything interesting about this card or the set?

Found this 1983 Lincoln cent in an old coin holder labeled “Off Center Cent.” The strike is noticeably off-center, and I thought it was a pretty cool mint error to come across.

Does anyone have any insight into how significant this error is or what something like this might be worth? Curious to hear what the collectors here think.

Spain, Alfonso XIII, 50 Céntimos, dated 1904 but actually struck in 1910 — the printed date on these is fixed to the 1904 dies, and the real strike year is hidden in the six-pointed stars flanking the date (you can find 19-10 worked into them if you look closely). Madrid mint, "PC-V" below the shield on the reverse — the assayer/engraver initials for that striking. PCGS TrueView, cert #53600173.

What sold me on posting it: the obverse has this blue-green halo creeping in around the rim at upper left that breaks into deep amber and russet across the portrait and lower field, looks like old album toning rather than anything artificial. The reverse is more even, warm olive-gold with a thin iridescent rim.

So I was reading up on the Bank of Canada's 1954 note series and ran into a genuinely weird case study in how engraving technique can accidentally create a controversy.

The 1954 series put Elizabeth II on every denomination. The portrait was designed by Charles Comfort, based on a photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh, and engraved onto the printing plate by George Gundersen at the British American Bank Note Company. Gundersen was apparently extremely good at his job good enough that he faithfully reproduced the natural shadow and curl patterns in the Queen's hair above her left ear, exactly as they appeared in the photo.

Problem: once that shadow detail got translated into high-contrast intaglio linework (the fine engraved lines used on currency), it resolved into something that looked a lot like a grinning face. Not intentional — nobody snuck anything in just an artifact of an engraver reproducing a photograph too precisely for the printing medium.

Complaints started showing up from 1956 onward (a British MP named H. L. Hogg reportedly wrote in). Rather than recall the currency — which obviously wasn't practical — the Bank had engraver Yves Baril quietly darken the offending highlights on the plate. Notes printed after 1957 came out clean, no public statement or acknowledgment that anything had ever been wrong.

Source: Bank of Canada Museum's writeup on the "Devil's Head" notes (bankofcanadamuseum.ca).

So I was reading up on the Bank of Canada's 1954 note series and ran into a genuinely weird case study in how engraving technique can accidentally create a controversy.

The 1954 series put Elizabeth II on every denomination. The portrait was designed by Charles Comfort, based on a photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh, and engraved onto the printing plate by George Gundersen at the British American Bank Note Company. Gundersen was apparently extremely good at his job — good enough that he faithfully reproduced the natural shadow and curl patterns in the Queen's hair above her left ear, exactly as they appeared in the photo.

Problem: once that shadow detail got translated into high-contrast intaglio linework (the fine engraved lines used on currency), it resolved into something that looked a lot like a grinning face. Not intentional — nobody snuck anything in — just an artifact of an engraver reproducing a photograph too precisely for the printing medium.

Complaints started showing up from 1956 onward (a British MP named H. L. Hogg reportedly wrote in). Rather than recall the currency — which obviously wasn't practical — the Bank had engraver Yves Baril quietly darken the offending highlights on the plate. Notes printed after 1957 came out clean, no public statement or acknowledgment that anything had ever been wrong.

Source: Bank of Canada Museum's writeup on the "Devil's Head" notes (bankofcanadamuseum.ca).

So I was reading up on the Bank of Canada's 1954 note series and ran into a genuinely weird case study in how engraving technique can accidentally create a controversy.

The 1954 series put Elizabeth II on every denomination. The portrait was designed by Charles Comfort, based on a photograph taken by Yousuf Karsh, and engraved onto the printing plate by George Gundersen at the British American Bank Note Company. Gundersen was apparently extremely good at his job good enough that he faithfully reproduced the natural shadow and curl patterns in the Queen's hair above her left ear, exactly as they appeared in the photo.

Problem: once that shadow detail got translated into high-contrast intaglio linework (the fine engraved lines used on currency), it resolved into something that looked a lot like a grinning face. Not intentional — nobody snuck anything in just an artifact of an engraver reproducing a photograph too precisely for the printing medium.

Complaints started showing up from 1956 onward (a British MP named H. L. Hogg reportedly wrote in). Rather than recall the currency — which obviously wasn't practical — the Bank had engraver Yves Baril quietly darken the offending highlights on the plate. Notes printed after 1957 came out clean, no public statement or acknowledgment that anything had ever been wrong.

Source: Bank of Canada Museum's writeup on the "Devil's Head" notes (bankofcanadamuseum.ca).

So I've been going down a rabbit hole on Hungary's 1946 hyperinflation and this banknote is genuinely hard to wrap your head around. It's a 10^20 pengő note — that's 100 quintillion — issued by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank on June 3, 1946. It's recognized by Guinness as the highest-denomination banknote ever actually printed and circulated (there are reports of an even higher 10^21 note existing, but that one seems to have been for tax bookkeeping only, never actually issued — still needs a firmer source than I've found, so take that part with a grain of salt).

The backstory is the part that gets me: this wasn't reckless money-printing in a vacuum. Hungary came out of WWII devastated, under Soviet occupation, paying reparations and having resources extracted, all while the government kept printing pengő to cover a budget it couldn't otherwise fund. By July 1946 prices were doubling roughly every 15 hours — daily inflation hit around 207% on average, spiking to 350% on the worst day. That's the worst hyperinflation ever recorded, worse than Weimar Germany or Zimbabwe.

The note itself only lasted about two months before Hungary pulled the plug — it was withdrawn July 31, 1946, and replaced the next day by a new currency, the forint, at an exchange rate of 400 octillion pengő to 1 forint. For scale, that's a 4 followed by 29 zeros.

What strikes me is the design is completely mundane for how absurd the number on it is — allegorical woman in Hungarian folk dress and the national coat of arms on one side, the Parliament building in Budapest on the other. No sign on the note itself of the chaos it represents.