By Christopher Dahncke – Currency Auction Associate, Stack’s Bowers Galleries ……
Stacks Bowers Galleries is pleased to present a large assortment of Haitian notes in our January 2021 auction.
We are offering 53 notes from Haiti, split between our Live and Internet sessions. These notes span from the 1820s through the 1960s, offering notes from the early Republic of Haiti, through the U.S. Civil War period, and up to more modern times.
The standout highlights are lots 30176 and 30177. These notes stem from Bernard Kock’s attempts to re-settle freed slaves from the American Civil War on the Haitian satellite island of Île-à-Vache. Bernard planned to use the island as a settlement to produce cotton, with freed Blacks as workers, and secured permission from the Haitian government to do so. The island’s own currency was produced by Kock, which could be exchanged for normal Haitian Gourde notes.
The settlement of the island fell through in late 1863, mainly to the fault of the financiers, and President Abraham Lincoln sent a ship to Haiti to bring the workers back to the United States.
The notes would have been issued from around the time of the island’s settlement of April 13, 1863, through December 22, 1863, when the settlement was abandoned – an eight-month window that explains their scarcity today. Two outstanding Haitian rarities – a ½ Gourde and a ¼ Gourde – are presented in the Stack’s Bowers Galleries January auction for the first time since 2014.
Our Live Session will take place on January 15 at 4 PM PST at the Balboa Bay Resort. The internet Session will start on January 18 at 9 AM PST. The sale is available online for viewing and bidding, and catalogs have been sent out. To view our upcoming auction schedule and future offerings, please visit StacksBowers.com where you may register and participate in this and other forthcoming sales.
We are always seeking coins, medals, and paper money for our auctions, and are currently accepting submissions through January 15, 2021, for our April 2021 Hong Kong auction. Our next CCO (Collectors Choice Online) auction will be crossing the block in February 2021 and has a submission deadline of January 12, 2021. If you would like to learn more about consigning, whether a singular item or an entire collection, please contact one of our consignment directors today and we will assist you in achieving the best possible return on your material.
