100 francs on 20 Piastres type 1939 "New Caledonia"

Support and warn collectors ...

One of Numizon's missions is to keep you informed. So let's start with some nasty news! We are informed of a scam currently on sale on ebay! This is ad # 274323765200, located in Leicester, England and entitled “#French Bank of New Caledonia colony 100 francs 1939 P-39 AF Athena”. The seller is unfortunately not at his first try because we had already denounced a sale of this man in November 2019 (1).

The object of this new false sale now concerns a counterfeit 100 francs note on 20 Piastres overprinted "Noumea" type 1939 (2) from the Bank of Indochina. The note is numbered "Y.197-657", which is important for the rest of our presentation. Eight auctions have already been carried out on the lot for a current amount of £ 31 (about € 35). Like the last time and probably for the sake of opacity, the auctions are of course private, which will certainly allow the seller to more easily "push" his sale using another nickname!

Editor's note: the photos of the sale have been cut out for aesthetic and layout reasons.

A 20 Piastres type 1936 tampered with!

Although oddly the seller does not mention it in the title and description of his ad, the counterfeit note for sale is supposed to be a very rare copy of the 100 francs on 20 Piastres overprinted "Noumea" type 1939. But this is not is absolutely not the case, because it is a copy of 20 Piastres type 1936 (3) on which have been affixed false overprints on a note identical to the one presented below.

Demonstration...

The 20 Piastres type 1936 does not have a creation date. It was issued in September 1937. Its dimensions are 162 x 87 mm. The note also includes the signatures (4) of Marcel Borduge, The President and that of Paul Baudouin, The Managing Director. The banknote consists of 247 alphabets (A.1 to W.247), or 25,000 notes per alphabet representing a total of 6,125,000 copies issued.

But it turns out that the alphabets 83 and 84 are not included in this total at all. These were kept to be overprinted and give rise to the 100 francs on 20 Piastres overprinted "Noumea" type 1939! Discover the “TRUE” note below:

A precedent in 2015 ...

By carrying out additional research, we discovered the sale of a first counterfeit 100 francs note on 20 Piastres type 1939, but this time in an official sale, which is more embarrassing.

The auction house Christoph Gärtner is unfortunately and probably the first victim to have offered, certainly out of ignorance, a counterfeit note numbered "C.175-505" in the catalog of the 32nd sale in October 2015 (Lot # 38179). The note was offered at € 150 in F grade ... Hopefully this copy did not fail in a collector's workbook, because we found no indication of sale or withdrawal!

Numizon inventory

To help professionals, dealers and collectors to identify this banknote and to avoid in the future that this type of sale can be repeated, we communicate to you our inventory of known copies for the 100 francs on 20 Piastres overprinted "Noumea" type 1939. Our score currently has 40 copies, details of which are given in the table below. We also note two perforated copies "CANCELLED" horizontally and having served as "SPECIMEN". These two copies are to be considered very rare: "D.83-142" (5) and "N.84-916".

Conclusion

We can only encourage you to acquire a "TRUE" note for an amount undoubtedly lower or similar to the price that this "FALSE" will ultimately do!

Notes

(1) Read the Numizon news dated November 22, 2019 and entitled: "Counterfeit overprint on 20 francs Djibouti type Peacock I".

(2) References of 100 francs on 20 Piastres type 1939 "Nouméa":

• Pick: # 39,
• Kolsky / Muszynski: # 416,
• The Banknote Book : # B301a,
• Schwan / Boling: # 1601.

(3) References of 20 Piastres type 1936:

• Pick: # 56b,
• Kolsky / Muszynski: # 152b,
• The Banknote Book: # B101.
  

(4) The signatures on the two notes:

(5) The specimen “D.83-142” in our database:

Editor's note: article update in July 31, 2021.