Museum Trip

  A few days back I was able to sit down for about an hour with Mr. Howe, the curator of the Finance Corp Museum. It was a great visit and he shared a lot of information with me about MPCs and the museum. The majority of questions I had for him was about the series 701 and 691 notes that he has on display and on hand at the museum. I learned a lot during the visit. The museum currently houses both series still sealed in the original cases, roughly 350 cases and about a semi-trailer full to put it in perspective. Both series were being stored at Ft Ben Harrison until the late 90's or so. They decided they needed the space so they shipped them to Anniston Army Depot which is the holding center for all Army museums. In the early 2000's the Anniston Army Depot decided they no longer had the space and were going to shred them. At that point the museum said they will find space to store them and they were shipped to Fort Jackson around 2003. The cases have not been inventoried and most are still sealed which would mean that it is impossible to tell how many have been “liberated”. It is also impossible to know how many replacement notes are mixed into the cases.

He has some progressive proofs and let me check those out which were really cool. Each denomination of a series had about 10 notes in a book to show each different layer of printing. Below is a picture of a series 692 $1 with one or two layers (I can't remember). I will be scanning a bunch of these when I go back as well to show the entire progress of the printings...Note that there are no position, serial, or denomitation on this note yet.

Lastly, we mainly just sat around and talked about the current economy and past historical events that have seemed to repeat themselves. Military retirement being a highlight. It was a good visit and he invited me to come back when I have more time and I can get some scans and pictures of the items he has not on display. I am hoping I can talk him into letting me get a picture of the stored MPC notes still in the cases.

If anyone has any questions that they would like for me to ask during my next visit just let me know. I plan on going back in late November .

mtnstyne@gmail.com