The Extremely Rare 1986 Marcos head 500 - peso note to be auctioned this Month

Lot Description of the Marcos Head 500-peso banknote

The Bayanihan Collectors Club Local Auction Catalgue

After the Marcos regime ended, the Aquino government implemented a draconian reformation including the immediate deletion of all memories that would remind the public of the former president. Statues, monuments, publications, including projects were torn down, demolished, or discontinued as part of the process. During that same period, then Bangko SentralNg Pilipinas was about to introduce the 500-peso denomination, which featured Marcos head. Before the denomination was about to be distributed, Ferdinand Marcos was ousted by way of the first People Power revolution thus, it never reached circulation and were left stored in the Central Bank’s vault until the new government was installed.

Former president Aquino ordered the destruction of all of these banknotes that even the Central Bank Museum does not have any specimen in their collection. The order was very directive that not a single piece be left as a reminder of the history that had taken placed. However, a single image of the note was captured by a researcher who was then compiling a catalogue of Philippine banknotes. I have found that mysterious manuscript inside the Quezon City Hall public Library with the original pictures attached to it. The crude research paper never reached mass production and the original manuscript was placed along with several books in the Filipiniana section. The pages of the manuscript were already torn that even the title page was missing yet surprisingly, the single picture of the 500-Marcos note was there when I first made that discovery.

I was disappointed that the library do not allow their books brought outside despite of my formal request from the administrator to have it colored copied, and thus I left the image at the hands of other library goers.

The second time I came, I brought myself a digital camera to have the image reproduced but it was not there anymore. Sad to say that even just the picture of this amazingly rare note was lost that I had feared that it was lost forever until a great news arrived.

This 30th of November, the Bayanihan Collectors Club will conduct a regular auction, which features the printer’s proof of the 500-peso Marcos banknote. Despite of the numerous rare collections that will be offered, the item is placed under the regular local auction so, no image was attached along with the lot description. This is a once in lifetime opportunity for Philippine note collectors since this is the first time that the numismatic world would first capture the first and probably the only existing copy of the note---which coincidentally, is also the printer’s copy.

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BSP Issued Advisory Against Illegal Used Of Coins

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) requests the support of the public in reporting persons who are involved in defacing/mutilating or smuggling Philippine coins. Both are criminal acts punishable by law under Presidential Decree 247 and BSP Circular 98, Series of 1995 in relation to Section 2530 (f) of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines, as amended.

The BSP also warns the public against persons claiming that the central bank “buys” certain coin denominations higher than their face value. There is no truth to this information.

The BSP is the sole issuer of currency in the Philippines. It mints and circulates coins in accordance with its mandate to supply the currency requirements of the banking system and sustain economic growth. It determines the different denominations of our money, both banknotes and coins, and the public should accept them at face value, no more, no less.

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Harvard's Ferguson Praises `Ascent of Money' as Markets Plunge

Niall Ferguson, a canny chronicler of financial history, knows a thing or two about market timing.

Sellers have sliced more than $10 trillion off global stock- market value this month, the U.S. is mired in its worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, and hedgehog Andrew Lahde has shut his fund, telling investors, ``Goodbye and good luck.''

So what does Ferguson do? He publishes ``The Ascent of Money,'' an upbeat account of finance from Mesopotamia to McMansion. His thesis: ``Money is the root of most progress.''

After that windup, you might expect me to trash his book. Alas, I can't.

Ferguson, a Scotsman who teaches at Harvard, is the bestselling author of books including ``The House of Rothschild'' and ``The War of the World.'' His new work, like the last three, was conceived as a TV series as well as book. His reputation is riding so high that someone would short him if he were a stock, as Adam Smith biographer James Buchan recently wrote.

``The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man,'' Ferguson writes. ``Far from being the work of mere leeches intent on sucking the life's blood out of indebted families,'' he says, ``financial innovation has been an indispensable factor in man's advance from wretched subsistence to the giddy heights of material prosperity that so many people know today.''

Ferguson mercifully lifts the reader above today's doom and gloom with this smart reminder of how mankind has benefited from the rise of bankers, credit and markets. The book works as either a primer or a refresher course, though a serious student of financial history may learn little from these pages.

Clay Tablets

Cantering off in swift, declarative prose, Ferguson traces the rise of money from ancient clay tablets and Roman coins up through the Medici's foreign-exchange dealings; the development of banks; the Dutch formation of a joint-stock, limited liability corporation, the United East India Company; and the resulting creation of the Amsterdam stock market, where bulls were already battling bears in the early 17th century.

As befits a storyteller with a TV deal, Ferguson whips up a good old-fashioned narrative history, complete with heroes and villains, visionaries and scoundrels. Nathan Rothschild is seen shipping gold coins to the Duke of Wellington's army during the Napoleonic Wars. Two hard-drinking Scottish Presbyterian ministers Robert Wallace and Alexander Webster set up what Ferguson calls the first true insurance fund in 1744.

Flawed financial alchemist John Law of Edinburgh introduced 18th-century Paris to the stock-market bubble. We even glimpse a grinning Alan Greenspan accepting the Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service from Ken Lay just weeks before Enron Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001.

British `Narco-State'

The tales, though familiar, are told with brevity and irreverence: The opium-trading British Empire was ``history's most successful narco-state.'' Long-Term Capital Management LP became ``Short-Term Capital Mismanagement.''

Ferguson delights, too, in challenging conventional interpretations of events. The Rothschilds, he argues, made their fortune in spite of the Battle of Waterloo, not because of it. The real turning point in the American Civil War, he argues, came when Union forces captured New Orleans in April 1862, preventing investors in Confederacy cotton bonds from taking possession of the cotton underpinning the securities.

Each chapter teases out a topical thread -- be it real estate or risk -- and toggles ahead in time to show how past trends created present realities. A chapter on banking lands in Bankruptcy Court in Memphis, Tennessee. A discussion of bonds closes with a Congressional Budget Office forecast that the U.S. federal debt will balloon to more than $12 trillion by 2017.

Fittest Survive

Like many economists these days, Ferguson sees finance through the filter of evolution: Each shock to the system results in casualties, as the weakest institutions expire.

``Financial history is essentially the result of institutional mutation and natural selection,'' he writes.

Ferguson closes on a somewhat defensive note. While writing the book, he was often asked if he had selected the wrong title, he says. He stands by the name.

``There have been great reverses, contractions and dyings, to be sure,'' he writes. ``But not even the worst has set us permanently back. Though the line of financial history has a saw- tooth quality, its trajectory is unquestionably upwards.''

``The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World'' is from Penguin Press in the U.S., Allen Lane in the U.K. (442 pages, $29.95, 25 pounds).

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Austria witnesses New Gold Rush

Austrian Philharmonic Gold Coins

The financial crisis is prompting people to look for safer forms of investment than stocks and shares.

The interest in gold coins is so great that many of the world's major mints are struggling to keep up with demand, including the Austrian Mint, which produces the Vienna Philharmonic - one of the best-selling bullion coins worldwide.

Sales of Vienna Philharmonic gold coins have gone up by more than 230% since last year.

Kerry Tattersall, the director of marketing at the mint, says production has gone into overdrive.

"We are running at present something like three shifts on all of the machines, on the presses, producing both gold and the silver bullion coins.

"We've actually got delays in delivering orders in silver. With gold, we are just about keeping pace, but it is a bit of a struggle."

In September alone, the mint sold 100,000 ounces in gold coins - in normal times it would take three to four months to sell that much.

Mr Tattersall says people are looking for security.

"We are seeing a lot of panic buying at the moment. People are losing confidence in the economy - whether that is justified or unjustified is a matter of opinion. But we are seeing a lot of people looking for a safe haven."

King's ransom

In the mint, chunks of gold are melted down in a fiery furnace. Then a stream of molten metal is formed into a thin strip of gold, out of which the blank coins are cut. Later the blanks are struck with the design of violins and musical instruments.

The Austrian mint, in the heart of Vienna, was founded more than 800 years ago to make coins out of the silver ransom paid for King Richard the Lionheart, who was taken prisoner in Austria on his way home from the Crusades.

It is a sign of the importance people have attached to precious metals over the centuries.

But there is no such thing as a completely safe investment.

Gold, like all commodities, is vulnerable to fluctuations in price.

Prices tumbled in 1999 when Gordon Brown announced a decision to sell off some of the Bank of England's gold reserves.

Robert Stoeffele, an analyst at Austria's Erste Bank, says until recently there was less interest in gold as an investment.

"We forgot the appeal of gold in the last 28 years because we had a bear market in gold. But within the last few years we have seen a huge fundamental bull market for gold.

"Gold is like a thermometer for the financial markets. I'd say we've got fever," he said.

Life savings

But rising demand for gold is not just a phenomenon of global finance.

Ordinary Austrians, shocked by the precipitous falls in their own stock market - which was suspended this week for the first time ever - are also looking for a more solid store of wealth.

The shop at the Austrian Mint usually specialises in selling collectors' coins. But these days, a number of customers are buying bullion there - in bulk.

I saw one middle-aged couple handing over thousands of euros in cash, in exchange for dozens of 1oz Vienna Philharmonic gold coins.

A little later, a Viennese pensioner took a thick wad of 500-euro notes out of her handbag, and gave it to the sales assistant. He sold her a large gold bar, which looked as though it weighed a kilo.

"I have taken one piece of gold," she told me.

"You see, I am old, and I have earned money all my life and now I have the money in the bank and I am afraid of the financial situation, that it will disappear. Gold is safe, I think."

-Courtesy of BBC UK

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The 1910 S Ten Centavos: Truth or Dare!

The 1910 San Francisco Mint Ten Centavos

It had been more than two decades since the 1910 San Francisco Mint Ten Centavos was published that if somebody would have found it, the collector would have paid a great sum to have the fabled coin. The 1910 S is one of the famous numismatic pieces that had a very colorful background. Almost a century and there is still no confirmed and graded specimen had ever surfaced except for those 1918 S that were with altered dates to look like the 1910 S. Luckily, I was able to meet the person who claimed that he possesses the most intriguing coin in Philippine numismatic history. He don’t want to tell his name for a valid reason since nowadays that fakery and counterfeiting are so rampant that he wanted to protect his name and integrity, and the same with that of his prize possession.

I otherwise is in no position to claim that this is the genuine article except to show to you the picture of the coin since it had never undergone professional grading and I myself was not able to hold the piece that long for further scrutiny. Anyway, the story seems to be interesting enough for me to take time and have the owner interviewed.

According to historical record, only two pieces of the coin were produced and one of the two specimens was acquired by the National Museum and had it displayed until the World War II erupted. The National Museum as we know was destroyed by Japanese air raids during the war. Together with that, a great lost of Philippine historical records and artifacts went missing as massive looting and fires destroyed much of the collections among them to name a few were the skeletal remains of Andres Bonifaco and the 1910 S Ten Centavos.

There were no reports of its existence nor any could claim that the 1910 S Ten Centavos did ever exist except with this account. Not until a famous newspaper advertisement decades ago that the numismatic world became aware of its existence. However, after the story surfaced other craftsmen and forgers started producing faked or altered date 1918 S Ten Centavos to make money with the treasure hunt. Thus, a number of collectors and dealers began to doubt if there really is a 1910 S Ten Centavos or it is just one of the fairy tale of the numismatic world.

I asked my subject how did he acquire the piece. He explained to me that he was not aware that he has the coin in his collection since it came from a bulk of coins he bought from a sidewalk vendor during his visit in the Northern part of the Philippines. He was not otherwise aware that that particular coin exists since he has no reference, catalogues, nor much knowledge of coin mintage since he is not that serious into coin collecting.

When he joined the Philippine Numismatic and Antiquarian Society (PNAS), a local numismatic club then he learned that the coin that he now owns is that rare. Since he is also afraid to show the coin in public because of the counterfeit phobia he decided to hide the coin and just enjoyed it in privacy. Otherwise, he wants it be professionally graded first before he could brag that he owns the fabled coin in Philippine Numismatic history.

The owner wishes anonymity but he granted us to have the coin’s picture. You’ll be the judge of course, truth or dare!

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Collecting Coin is Fun?

When I started out collecting coins, most people thought that I had a weird hobby. Since, I always spent a portion of my allowance on coins, my parents would even think that I was wasting my time and coin collecting was detrimental. I was aware that I was the only one even in my class who has such passion for coins but i really don't know what made me kept happy whenever I add a piece of penny or a couple of change found from a "balikbayan" neighbors "pasalubong" to my collection. I felt excited whenever I visit a local coin shop or an antique shop to glance at some of the displays and always told myself that I would buy one in the future after i had asked the owner how much the price of that piece would be.

I stopped collecting coins for a while when I reached college. The schedule was hectic and I found it very hard to mingle with teens of my age whenever I entered coin collecting as an interesting subject. I felt that I was depriving myself during those years especially i that cannot barge from friends conversation when the topic of our "jam" was what we do like doing most as a past time.

I was already a career person when I again encountered coin collecting. Despite the traumatic experience I had during that second introduction since I bought fake coins for a hefty sum of money. I realized that still, coin collecting is fun for me. I know it is better to say that I should have stayed away from it but I thought it was part of educating myself and that experience was a preparation for me to become a professional numismatist and a collector.

Now, whenever I recall my past. I had no doubts that I made the right choice. Coin collecting is fun and will always be fun and that I would be more than willing to share that feelings with others as long as I could.

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