The ugly world of paper money grading (and the twenty million dollarnotes)
 

I've been aware of the seller 'Mr. Ahmet Sandikci' for some time. If
you've ever looked on ebay it's hard to miss this guy's stuff. He's a
self-promoter of the highest order.

$21 million dollars for a 1923 $5 *note
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=370147940250
$21 million dollars for a 1899 $5 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=370147949111

Obviously ridiculous stuff

Anyway, he opened his 'Arcade Currency Palace' store in Florida

Got some news coverage telling people to 'invest' in his notes. (This
is pretty funny to read:

http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/bi...RCADE1202.html

His notes' putative (and grossly inflated) value is predicated on
their being 'finest known', a purely subjective concept that says that
note A is better than note B because it has more evenly balanced
margins, but one which is given credence by the existence of paper
money grading companies, which say that note A is a 65 but note B is a
68.

Anyway, I stumbled over this page yesterday:

http://www.keycurrency.com/badgrade/

It's quite interesting. It seems that not only are you paying a much
higher price for your note because it's a '68' uncirculated rather
than a '65' uncirculated (sometimes five times, and in the case of
Sandicki perhaps 100 times), but sometimes those numbers are quite
blatantly wrong, such as the note with folded corners graded as
uncirculated. The problem being that charging people up to $600 (no,
really, it's true) to put a number on a piece of plastic is obviously
an attractive business plan. And Mr Sanddikci's notes are in 'CGA'
plastic, while other sellers use PMG or PCGS plastic, plus a whole
host of other ever more dubious companies (some with copycat acronyms)
who seem to exist purely to enrich dealers by allowing them to sell
pressed, low-grade paper for big money.

So not only are Mr. Sandikci's ridiculously overpriced notes priced
based on one new note being slightly better than another new note,
there's no guarantee that they are even in new condition in the first
place.

As you might have guessed from the absurdity of his operation, Mr.
Sandickci can't resist having a go at his critics, so if you look at
the pictures at the bottom of http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=370147949111
you'll see numerous digs at graders that are not CGA.

They may all both be missing the point about these numbered pieces of
plastic, but I think reading this thread by Mr. Sandiki tells you all
you need to know about him:

http://forums.collectors.com/message...hreadid=610584

Anyway, Mr. Sandici has managed to annoy a few people it seems:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...ikci+fbi&meta=

The author of the 'bad notes' page above put up an amusing auction a
few months back:

http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:...k&cd=7&gl=u k

as a dig at him.

But seems that Sandikci's friends had the last laugh:

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP... dbackAsSeller

Thankfully I have no interest in US money so all of this is merely a
source of amusement to me.