Hawaii Overprint Banknotes

Although I am not much for Numismatics, I truly appreciate the history and random significance that people can hold in something as simple as an old coin.

It shows them what they have valued in the past, it can guide them and center them like a an old compass aboard a tempest-tossed ship about the storm filled ocean seas.

Steering their mind through dark times and guiding them to better days.

It is a connection to those that came before us, and like any good investment is able to be turned towards future action, wealth, and new income from even a simple penny.

Someone earned that penny with their time,sweat, thoughts, hands, skills, or any other way you seek to look at that little piece of metal you let pass along you on your brisk pace atop the sidewalk of your life.

They did the same for North Africa during WW2. I also have a $1 silver certificate from when they ran trials on the paper in case something happened to stop the supply of paper the currency is printed on. Found that in circulation. It's in fine to very fine condition and worth about $200 to a collector.

I find collecting old or rare money to be strange. You have an object that exists specifically to be a placeholder for value, and has its value literally printed on it, yet people pay 5, 10, 100 times the printed value. On the other hand, it is probably nice for collectors to know that their investment has a definite lowest-possible value, that being the printed value of the coin or bill.

-Ian Francis

Old money is arguably more of an antique than currency.

"War changes the rules of investment and property, and requires a different skill set"

I always imagined our national parks being used as vacation homes or turned into amusement parks by our future conquers.

Just collateral right?

And us...you forgot about us...

I have some questions (for anyone), how does the federal reserve collect payment? Who enforces it exactly?

And what happens when collateral gets collected? How does that work? I don't really understand...

Does all hell break loose basically and it's an apocalypse type scenario with no rhyme or reason? or does 'something' actually happen?? I just don't understand...

I have some of these! A couple are in good condition and the other few are a little worn. I never knew the exact story!
I think I got a star one. There's different color inks too. I gotta check again, I almost forgot about them.

I wished they were stored better prior...lol. I need to research on how to store them properly, I'm not too interested in money value but more on the history of them.

Thank you Joshua for this post!

Get a non-PVC currency holder sheet from a coin dealer. That will keep them flat. Star Hawaii notes (stars are added on serial numbers to represent replacement of bills damaged in production) definitely have some value. Some of the Hawaii series bills are scarce, others quite common, particularly in lower grades.

> With a serious global conflict being a distant fantasy for nearly all domestic, non-military citizens alive today

I don't see it as becoming any more distant, though. If likelihood of major war involving world powers was a linear scale, events of the past, say 10 years would have rather inched it by a modest amount towards conflict, not away from it.

The concept of a government saying "your money is now worthless because we, the issuer, want it that way" is a powerful tool on a geopolitical scale, but I don't really like the idea. The irony here is that those banknotes are, or will be, thanks to collectors, worth more than regular non-self-destruct dollars.

Neither do I. That's the source of my concern. Virtually no one alive today in the United States, short of those at the end of life expectancy, is old enough to remember what real war-time conditions are like, what it does to your money, what ration vouchers are, what it is like to melt down your wrought iron fences for bullets, what it's like to have to shut off the lights as bombs explode around you, to watch the major industrial centers of your nations get obliterated, etc. I believe that a significant super majority of the population views the possibility that it could happen here as a ridiculous one, and I think they are wrong. I think that, subconsciously, they believe that the entire notion is as much a fantasy as Star Wars or The Neverending Story.

You're the one to talk, surrounded by your moat with every third citizen packing heat. Let me just remind you that the traditional opening to a world war is to beat up the slavic kid.

What you've told me suggests you have at least a rough plan of what to do with your financial assets once the world's empires start trading punches. How confidential is that?

What do you speculate modern corporations will do if war erupts? If the US and China went to war, and Coca-Cola makes 2x as many profits in China as the US, whose side gets refreshments during the war?

Both, of course. You could get Coca Cola in Nazi Germany up until the point where any load of cola syrup would end up at the bottom of the ocean - at which point Coca Cola Germany designed a new soft drink, Fanta. It's

Yes, Fanta was a result of ally bombardment and naval blockade. I'm not sure the company even suspended production at any point.

Back in WW2, Coca Cola promoted it's drink as a patriotic reminder of home among US soldiers - doing the same thing with Fanta in Nazi Germany.

Corporations are very predictable, in that their only goal is profit, not any specific moral position. Taking the moral highground is just a smokescreen and a PR/marketing move. If Raytheon could sell countermeasures to Iran, they would.

You'd probably see what happened during the earlier world wars. Major corporations would be seized on the national levels by the powers that be on both sides, and new stock certificates printed and disbursed among the domestic population.

For example, imagine that the United States went to war with Germany. If it was a truly global, epic scale war, all of the Siemens plants, inventory, factories, et cetera are going to be taken by the U.S. military, and then a new IPO is going to be held for American investors, the cash used by the military itself to fund the war effort. Or the business itself could be seized and refitted solely for military purposes. Look at things like Polski Fiat.

Or, if the business is totally international in its production capability, it could theoretically still be producing for both sides.

How this was all worked out after the conflict would depend on the victor, the terms of the treaty, the trademark ownership ...

Sometimes it takes generations to see it resolved. Read this story from September 19th, 1984 in The New York Times about World War II common stocks that were seized as war assets.

In other words: All bets are off, it's anybody's guess, anything could happen. That's the nature of war.

Great history behind the banknotes.

Speaking of currency changes in US History - check out this Youtube video of a guy trying to cash in his Silver Certificate at a Bank of America to get his silver... Than he tries to exchange a Silver Certificate for a Federal Reserve Note. The clerk looks at him and says "We don't have any of those here." The guy knew he wasn't going to get silver in return, but he makes the video to illustrate a bit of this mindset that people have that's being discussed here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0s73-cTykQ

Thanks for posting this! Answered all my questions!!