Dear Editor,
I was delighted to see an article in LANSA Newsletter No. 53 on commemorative banknotes.  It is a fascinating area of paper money collecting in which Latin America is well represented, as the article explained.

However, I would like to mention a couple of points that were overlooked.  They show the problem of relying solely on Pick's SCWPM Vol. 2 to get a full picture of the range of commemorative notes.

For instance, the earliest commemorative notes were not the Nicaragua series of 1894 (P-20 to P-23a), but are generally believed to have been a series of notes issued by the Leith Banking Company of Scotland, in 1823.  While the notes are not listed in any of the Pick volumes, they are in catalogues of Scottish private banks.  The Leith Bank issue marked the first visit to Scotland of an English monarch for 219 years.

Leith is the port for the city of Edinburgh and is the point at which King George IV set foot on Scottish soil in 1822.  The notes, of denominations of 20 shilling, one guinea and five pounds, carry vignettes showing the royal barge approaching Leith quayside and of the King steping ashore.  The 20 Shillings bears the royal coat of arms and the one guinea has a portrait of the King.  The notes are unquestionably commemorative, they mark a very significant event, and they were produced very soon after the event.

A second series overlooked in the article were the notes issued by Banco Minero in Mexico in 1910 to mark the 100th anniversary of Mexican independence.  These notes, of 5 and 10 pesos are listed in Pick's SCWPM Vol. 1 (P-S170, P-S171).

A final comment I would like to make on commemoratives is that this facinating area of collecting is in great danger of being debased by the flood of so-called commemoratives - "collector specials" I would call them -- coming out of several issuing authorities like Note Printing Australia and, in the LANSA region, Bermuda.  These questionable notes are produced in small volumes, with some variation on a regular note to make them ostensibly a commemorative, and marketed to numismatic dealers.  Don't let it happen to paper money.  I urge LANSA members to boycott these types of products.

--Ron Richardson, LANSA #721