$2 Charter Over Seal Variety

by Peter Huntoon

Michael Scacci sent this photo of a $2 Original Series note with the scarce charter number over seal variety from a printing made for The Bristol County National Bank of Taunton, Mass., charter 766.

He was responding to my article on the variety in the January 2019 BNR. My best estimate of the total number of these that were printed during the window when this variety was current during May to July 1874 was 80,180 sheets of the 1-1-1-2 combination for 65 banks in 22 states. The known Treasury serial number range for these is D868980-D949159. The Taunton bank received one printing of 1,000 sheets from this window; specifically, sheets D923553-D924552, 19701-20700 delivered to the Comptroller of the Currency on July 2, 1874.

Michael asked the logical question: How many deuces have been reported with the variety? Currently, there are 19 of them in the National Currency Foundation census with his being the only reported example from the Taunton bank. Similarly, there are 47 aces reported with the variety but none from the Taunton bank. Both of these counts are minimums because many of the aces and deuces in the census were reported without Treasury serials, so my sort of the census was blind to those entries that might have had the variety.

Also, of course, there are specimens out there that have not been reported. Even with these caveats, it is clear that the variety is genuinely scarce.