Collectors broke out into a bidding war the evening of January 22 and pushed the auction price of a $20 bill featuring a Del Monte banana sticker to nearly $400,000 USD at a public auction of rare U.S. currency held by Heritage Auctions.
The coveted banknote error sold to a bidder competing on Heritage’s live bidding platform, HA Live. Pre-auction bidding lifted the bids to $210,000. From there, the winning bidder outlasted a determined phone bidder and two other live internet bidders, to push the final winning auction price to $396,000. The price sets a world record for any error banknote ever sold. This was just the third time the note had been offered at public auction since its discovery in 2004.
“The Del Monte Note is considered perhaps the most famous of all U.S. error banknotes and now it holds a world record as the most valuable ever sold,” Dustin Johnston, Vice President of Currency Auctions at Heritage Auctions.
The obstruction caused a sensation among collectors of U.S. currency when it was discovered by an Ohio college student in the summer of 2004. The student received it as part of an ATM withdrawal and shortly thereafter posted it on eBay where it sold for $10,000. News of the note had barely hit the collecting community when Heritage then offered the note at auction in 2006 and it sold for $25,300.
But this isn’t the first U.S. bill to have an obstruction stuck on it during the printing process. Other objects include a Band-Aid, paper fragments, tape, and wood shavings.
“There’s no telling if the sticker was affixed to test printing standards or just a prank by a worker,” Johnston said.
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It was originally intended to be a project for a collage printing class but because of the thin line between being considered counterfeit printing it was ditched and sold on eBay.