World most expensive banknote

I have write a post about World most expensive banknote in my post the best paper money blog before but a reader still asked me about it. "You have a list of worlds most valuable and expensive coins in your blog but you never post what is the world's most expensive note yet". A highest price for a banknote that ever paid in auction is a US Grand Watermelon note. According to a press statement by Heritage Auction Gallery dated 16 December 2006, a buyer paid a world's record price of $2,255,000 for the United States bank note, more than double the previous record.

"The only other known red seal Grand Watermelon is in the museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco," said Greg Rohan, President of Heritage.

"This note is graded PMG VF-35. It is pedigreed to the famous Albert A. Grinnell collection and was sold at auction by Barney Bluestone for $1,230 in November 1944."

The anonymous seller of the record-breaking bill is described as "a private collector who owned the note for a number of years," and the anonymous buyer was described by Rohan as "a very advanced and sophisticated East Coast collector of art and rare currency."

The $2,255,000 price is more than double the previous record for a Grand Watermelon note, paid in a March 2005 auction for a brown seal, graded PCGS Currency-50. The previous world's record for any bank note was $2,100,000, set this past March each for a Series 1863 $100 denomination Gold Certificate (Fr. 1166c) and a unique Series 1891 $1,000 Treasury Note (Fr. 379c), both privately sold by Heritage.

The portrait on Grand Watermelon notes is Civil War-era General George Gordon Meade who commanded Union Army troops at the Battle of Gettysburg. The banknote get the name Grand Watermelon because of the large numeral fills and the zero on the reverse look like a big watermelon.

Source: Heritage Auction