MORE ON THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT DOLLAR BILL

I would not assign "Chopmarks" to the "Occupy" overprints mentioned in a recent issue of The E-Sylum. "Chopmarks" are a method of authenticating money and the "Occupy" overprints are pure propaganda.

I was in the "intelligence" field for a couple of decades and propaganda leaflets are a part of it. Herb Friedman, a retired US Army Sergeant Major, is a specialist in this area and has a website at www.psywar.org, where you can see many different leaflets and other propaganda pieces. The overstamped dollars are not the first time money or copies of money has been used to grab someone's attention to a message. You can also find some of these in a catalog by Fred Schwan and Joe Boling titled World War II Remembered.

The current overstamped dollars are an attempt to spread class warfare in the United States. It is one of the bedrock and fundamental methods of spreading the Socialist and Communist Party platforms. I have seen these parties use this tactic in almost every country in the world. And now it is bigtime in the United States. It is not humorous to me but sad to see so many people duped by their messages, and want to tear down the fabric of our country. The "Occupy" people and their supporters are dangerous and should be taken very seriously about their wanting to fundamentally change the United States.

When and if you donate one or more of the "Occupy" dollars to a numismatic collection, please correctly identify it as a propaganda piece from the Socialists and Communists.

Well, I didn't think I called this a chopmark. I opened the article with " 'Chopmarks', overstamps and other graffiti on banknotes are perennial topics here in The E-Sylum.". This item looks like an overstamp, and I agree with Howard that it falls into the political propaganda category.

I prefer to stick to numismatics and keep politics out of The E-Sylum, but since Howard's primary point was about how to classify this numismatic item, I published his note in full. But let's not go further down this path.

To return to numismatics, I was surprised no one commented on the text at the top of the image. It says something like "INSIDE OF DOTTED LINE... AND REPRINT THIS DOCUMENT". Was this printed on a flyer or in a newspaper? The writer of the article said he got the note in change. If someone printed it out and spent it, that's uttering a counterfeit. And the printer is a counterfeiter. Can anyone verify their source? This possibility brings to mind the Confederate notes of Samuel Upham. He printed them in the North as "souvenirs" of the Rebellion, but buyers happily smuggled them south and spent them.

-Editor

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: AN OCCUPY MOVEMENT DOLLAR BILL (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n51a19.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor