The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 24, June 13, 2004, Article 14

UNCUT SHEET PRANKS

  Hal V. Dunn writes: "I don't know any stories of collectors
  cutting notes out of sheets to amuse themselves at the expense
  of shocked waiters and shopkeepers. However, there are
  stories about Walter Scott, the legendary Death Valley Scotty,
  cutting notes from uncut sheets.

  One account, documented in Death Valley Scotty Told Me,
  by Eleanor Jordan Houston, the wife of a National Park Service
  Ranger stationed at Death Valley during the late 1940s, centers
  on a trip Scotty made many years before by train from Barstow,
  California to Los Angeles.  He had $4,800 in uncut sheets.  He
  purchased two bottles of wine, borrowed a pair of manicure
  scissors from a young lady and cut a bill off.  He told the couple
  he was with that the notes were counterfeit, but so good it was
  easy to pass them.  He even offered to sell the roll of bills for
  $4,000.  The husband of the young lady got off the train briefly
  at San Bernardino and notified the police.  In Los Angeles
  Treasury agents were waiting when the train arrived.  Frank J.
  Belcher, Jr., the assistant cashier for the Los Angeles bank was
  called in to settle the problem - Scotty indeed had received
  uncut sheets from the bank.  (pp. 36-39, appendix note #2;
  original copyright 1954, copyright 1985 by the Death Valley
  Natural History Association).

  As I recall there is another published reference to Death Valley
  Scotty cutting notes from sheets.  However, I am unable to
  locate it at the moment.  That story involved sheets from a
  national bank in Nevada.  He cut them off in front of numerous
  persons in Tonopah, Goldfield, or Rhyolite, Nevada,
  communities he frequented regularly."

  Tom DeLorey writes: "At the 1983 ANA convention in San
  Diego, I went out to dinner with then-fellow ANA employee
  Nancy Green and her husband Ron and their infant son,
  Andrew. Before we left the bourse area, I bought a four-subject
  sheet of deuces from the BEP booth, rolled it up and stuck it in
  my jacket. As we left, I handed Nancy a pair of scissors and
  told her to stick them in her purse.  Dinner came to just under
  $40, and by prior arrangement I took the check and gave the
  waiter a $50. He naturally came back with ten singles so that
  he could get most of them back as his tip, but I just stuffed
  them into another jacket pocket and casually asked Nancy for
  the scissors.  She did so with an absolutely straight face, and
  I took out the sheet of four deuces, carefully cut off one, and
  handed the waiter the conjoined "$6 bill."  As we calmly
  gathered up our belongings and the baby, the guy just stood
  there holding it out with a stunned look on his face. As we
  started to head towards the door, he finally said "Do you print
  your own?", to which I smiled and said "Doesn't everybody?"

  Ed Snible writes: "My favorite uncut sheet story comes from
  Steve Wozniak (inventor and founder of Apple Computer):

  "I take the sheets of 4 bills and have a printer, located through
  friends, gum them into pads, like stationery pads. The printer
  then perforates them between the bills, so that I can tear a bill
  or two away.  The bills that I'd tipped the waitress came from
  such a pad." Story

  Myron Xenos writes; "Of some humorous interest might be a
  case where a client of mine turned an uncut sheet of one-dollar
  notes sideways, and then cut the paper into some very
  odd-looking pieces of currency. It surprised me at first until I
  realized what he had done. A good bar trick for numismatists
  who like to fool their drinking buddies & probably good for a
  few drinks. But then I would get the heck out before they
  caught on."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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