Counterfeit Notes with Joseph Boling
For this month’s column, I have invited Joseph Boling, an expert on counterfeit bank notes, to share some of his thoughts on collecting bank notes. He has written or contributed to several books and edited several more. His second book with Fred Schwan, World War II Remembered: history in your hands, a numismatic study, was the NLG’s Book of the Year for 1995.
Q. How long have you been a bank note collector?
A. It was probably 1959 when I pulled an error MPC out of circulation, so technically I started then (I had been collecting stamps since about 1950). But I didn’t start pursuing paper money until late 1964 or early 1965, when I went to a stamp and coin show at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and found the German inflation notes selling for five cents each. After comparing the amount of engraving that would fit on a note to the amount that fits on a stamp, I never went back to stamps.
Q. What inspired you to become
