Notes from Washington: First $5 1950B Federal Reserve Notes
The notes have one thing in common: the serials end with some zeros and a one.
Featured is a district set of 1950B Federal Reserve Notes five dollar bills.
Nice set, so what?
The notes have one thing in common: the serials end with some zeros and a one. This is a series where numbering progressed from the Series of 1950A to 1950B. These notes happen to be the very first 1950Bs! Now, we are talking about highly unusual and terrific numismatic items.
I have always enjoyed first and last notes, so over my collecting career, I have attempted to obtain them when the opportunity presented itself. Anyone can understand a 00000001 note, but something like one of these firsts requires a bit more sophistication.
Of course, to make this type of collecting feasible, our catalogs have to list the range of issued serials, which has been done only haphazardly.
To my knowledge, this is the only district set of FRN firsts ever put together from the classic small note era; that is, during the period when the notes were printed from 12- and 18-subject plates on flatbed presses using wetted paper.
I bought this set from Lyn Knight at a coin show on Nov. 4, 1985. I don’t know the entire story behind the set, but I do know enough to paint the big picture, which is worth telling.
Most collectors go to a show, eBay, or an auction, buy a note, stick it in their album, and don’t think much more beyond that. I have always viewed every transaction with wonder. Each is an uncanny convergence between a piece of currency and someone who finds it desirable enough to purchase and save. The story of how the note and the collector find each other through the decades is, in reality, a very improbable event.
In the case of this set, I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, as both the set and I were traveling through time and space.
I recall Lyn behind a table when I walked up, but I don’t remember exactly how I spotted the set. That is, whether he specifically showed it to me or if it was on display in his case, and I asked what it was about. I know that he had ten sets of these $5s that represented the first ten notes from each district. WOW, I never saw that before.
Apparently, I was the first to take a serious interest in the notes at the show.
He said they came from the estate of famed collector Amon Carter Jr. However, the deal had experienced a severe glitch before the show.
He was pricing the sets prorated by their order. My focus was on the first set and I began to realize I somehow had arrived first in line. You don’t squander that.
Think about it. Here I was, a fellow who really enjoyed such notes, and fate had dropped them in front of me by sheer chance.
Lyn said $1,060. Probably the $60 was the tax. I couldn’t get my checkbook out fast enough. This was a no-brainer.
Even then, number one notes were selling for up to $1,000 each. There is no question that notes with serials that start with 7 zeros look sexier, but these firsts are far rarer and to me just as significant.
I owned the set until 2024, that’s 39 years. Amortized over that period, the set cost $27 per year. I got far more satisfaction and entertainment value than that by being able to flash it around.
Let’s now consider the set itself. Putting it together was a big accomplishment because someone with real pull caused it to happen. Multiple people were involved within the Treasury Department back in 1957 to do it. I have no knowledge of exactly how the feat was accomplished, but the broad stroke is that Amon Carter conceived the idea and had the connections to see it through.
Amon Carter Jr. (1919-1982) was a larger-than-life personage in our game. His father owned the influential Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which Amon assumed and carried forward. Amon was a wealthy man who moved easily within political circles and enjoyed high-level friendships and contacts. As a young man, however, his life was not always a walk through the park. The following two paragraphs are reproduced from the Amon Carter Jr. Timeline.
In 1941, he entered the army as a lieutenant with the 1st Armored Division. He was taken prisoner in Tunisia, North Africa, in 1943 while serving as a forward observer. He was initially held in Italy, then transferred to Poland by the German Wehrmacht. During the 27 months he was a prisoner in Oflag 64, a camp outside Szubin, Poland, he managed to contact his father and tell him he was alive and that he was with other Texas prisoners of war. His father began publishing updates for all the families in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Carter Sr. sent his son supplies and information through an underground contact in Portugal. Carter Jr. used these materials to publish a newspaper on toilet paper for the camp. He also included news from a friendly Polish contact at the train station who clandestinely listened to British radio and left news items in a wastebasket for Carter Jr. to recover later.
In 1945, German forces, in full retreat, moved the prisoners of Oflag 64 to a camp outside Berlin, severing the connection between the Carters. The camp was liberated by advancing Russian units. Carter Sr.’s sources spent six weeks scouring Europe for Carter Jr., but he had been transferred to an Allied camp for American prisoners and released. The Carters were reunited by chance outside the 83rd Brigade Headquarters in Germany. For the rest of his life, Amon sent assistance to the Polish family that helped him when he was a prisoner of war.
We know that Amon cultivated high Treasury officials because he was able to acquire some first notes and even signature changeover pairs of 1950-1960 vintage, some autographed by his Treasury official friends. The $5 FRNs probably came through Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson.
In order to pull together the first ten $5 1950B notes from each of the Federal Reserve districts, someone in the Treasury had to intercept the first brick for each district as they arrived from the BEP. Obviously, the person doing so was acting on behalf of either the Secretary of the Treasury or the U.S. Treasurer. The job was made tenable because the first printings for all twelve districts arrived from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on Sept. 25, 1967. In contrast, the first deliveries for the preceding 1950A $5s dribbled in over a seven-week period inclusive of July 6 and Sept. 25, 1953. (Shafer (1967, p. 120).
The exact course that the ten sets followed from Carter’s estate to Lyn Knight 18 years after Amon had acquired them was not revealed to me. What is known, though, is that documentation describing exactly what the sets represented did not accompany them. Lyn got what he perceived as 10 district sets of 1950B of five dollar bills.
Shortly after getting the notes, Lyn showed them to a dealer he knew who liked small-size FRNs. That fellow bought all the notes from one of the scarcer districts.
Then a light went off! Maybe there was something more to the batch. Lyn dug a bit and discovered exactly what he had just broken up. He hastily tracked down the buyer, explained the mistake, and retrieved the notes. Fortunately, the buyer hadn’t sold any yet and was compliant. Tragedy averted!
Lyn then brought the reassembled batch to the next show, where I bought my set.
This was not the only time Lyn pulled a great note and me together as an improbable and serendipitous odds-defying trick of fate. I’ll tell you that tale as well.
On Oct. 30, 1976, while living in Laramie, Wyo., I drove down to a coin show in Denver. I made the rounds of the show and was leaving. I happened to pass Lyn in the lobby outside the bourse as he was walking in. I had no idea he was going to be at the show. He happened to have a 1902 $10 national bank note sticking out of his shirt pocket. As I passed, I saw that the charter number was 5117.
I couldn’t believe it. I swiveled on my heel and called out: “Hey, Lyn, show me your Juneau!” Startled, he paused. Now, I didn’t have the deepest pockets in the game, so he could have blown me off. But instead, he pulled it out and handed it to me. It certainly wasn’t a first note of the type profiled above but in its own way it was plenty close enough!
I stammered, “How much?” He took a few seconds and said something like a couple of thousand.
What do you do in such a moment? Do you quibble over the price, dither about the grade, or pause over your ability to cover your check? Wrong—the gods have thrown you a bone! You count your lucky stars, pull out your checkbook, write the check, and say a sincere thank you!
IF I had lingered in the show just a few more minutes, IF Lyn had arrived five minutes later—IF—IF—IF—it would never have happened.
That note printed 58 years before, was especially for me and served temporarily for the next 30 years of its life as a major highlight in my collection.
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