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| A Bank of England Overprint.
If we consult the Pick catalogue of world paper money, we will note under " Great Britain " a series of overprinted Bank of England £1 notes from the very late 1930s and 1940. Although the market value shown for the overprinted notes is much higher than for the regular issue, there is no explanation as to what or why these things are . There are two different overprints and neither are for Britain - they are for Guernsey .
Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands located just off the coast of France south of the Brittany peninsula. There are four main islands: Jersey (45 sq. miles), Guernsey (25 sq. mi) Alderney and Sark (each of only a couple of square miles). They have been possessions of England for many centuries, at least back to the days of Edward I, although they were briefly occupied by France a few times. With their benign climates, farming has always been important, the two main islands giving their names to breeds of cattle; fishing was carried on, "Jerseymen" prominent in the Newfoundland fisheries; "importing duty-free" was practiced for many years and during the last century, tourism from Britain has been important.
At the outbreak of WWII, Guernsey's currency consisted of her own bronze 1-, 4- and 8-"double" pieces, the equivalent of the British farthing, halfpenny and penny respectively; they also were using "States of Guernsey" notes in denominations of 10/ and £1. But the silver denominations were all British and, due to tourism, there were many more Bank of England notes circulating than the native Guernsey ones, the £1 ones being special favourites.
Immediately after the fall of France in the very late spring, 1940, all the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans since, essentially, they could not be defended. Each was placed under the authority of a German military governor and, all things considered, the occupation was fairly quiet in comparison to other places.
As might be expected, the silver coinage tended to quickly disappear into many small hoards as a possible hedge against hard times, leaving a big hole in the circulating denominations, partially filled by imported French coins in aluminum-bronze and aluminum. But not very well. German "permission" to use their currency was apparently a largely unused option as well.
In early 1941, the Guernsey authorities petitioned the Germans for permission to issue £5000 in fractional-value notes. This was granted, providing that an equal amount of Guernsey or Bank of England £1 notes were turned in. The Guernseys may have already been planning for this, since it so happened that they had this sum on hand in torn and mutilated notes from before the invasion, originally intended to be sent to England for replacement, but simply quietly squirreled away when the Germans came. These notes were dutifully turned in, but not before all of them were prominently overprinted WITHDRAWN so that they could not be used again. So far as we can gather, all of these notes were destroyed since none seem to have survived.
The withdrawn and destroyed notes backed an issue of 2/6 and 5/ "States of Guernsey" notes dated 25th March, 1941 (and probably another dated 17 May 1941 as well), printed locally by the Guernsey Press Company using designs by one of its employees, E.W. Vaudin.
But within a few months, the need for fractional notes arose again - and especially for smaller values. Again, permission was sought and received from the Germans to do so, but with the proviso that they must be fully backed by £1 Bank of England notes withdrawn from circulation and turned over. This was done but Guernsey authorities, so that the notes could not be used again (which may have not pleased the Germans), overprinted all of these notes vertically face and back with the wording "Withdrawn from/ Circulation / September 18th / 1941" as well as another with the same wording with the date "November 10th / 1941". This funded several future issues of fractional notes, including denominations of 6d, 1/ and 1/3; oddly, all of the shilling denominations consist of 1/3 notes surcharged with a large red "1/" - in fact, 75% of the 1/3 notes were so surcharged.
By late 1942, some new means of backing the notes came into being. By this time, even the Bank of England £1 notes were in short supply since a series of 1 January 1943 included one-pound denominations - and no fewer than 160,000 of them were issued to the end of the war. All of these notes were considered legitimate by the British following the liberation in 1944; they were redeemed and withdrawn in 1945. Today all are scarce but not terribly rare, especially in the lower conditions.
At the end of the war, it was found that some of the overprinted Bank of England £1 notes were still in storage and some £2000 of them were returned to the Bank of England by Guernsey as mutilated notes for replacement. There they were destroyed. For many years, examples of these overprinted notes were considered very rare, although today we would find the market value almost laughably low - but that was mostly a factor of a limited number of collectors and a "supply" that rarely showed up in the open market. In the 1980s, a hoard numbering 2935 of these notes showed up but rather than depressing the price much, the greatly increased number of collectors and considerable publicity saw the whole supply soon absorbed. In the last 20 years, they have nearly tripled in value, what's more. Here we have a good example of the role paid by publicity in creating demand and increasing market value; other notes, much much rarer but little publicized, may have but a fraction of the market value.
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FebruaryThe Canadian Works of George Kruger-Gray
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