Here are a few things I observed and heard years ago.

Parrino was said to have worked at a casino in Las Vegas known as 'The Mint'. Parrino's coin business was also known as 'The Mint'.

At the height of his coin career in the mid-90's, Parrino had a booklet prepared that was inserted in the middle of a Coin World issue just before a major show. Unless I'm mistaken, it was distributed just before the FUN show. The booklet contained most or all of the expensive coins in his inventory at the time, including much of the fabulous large cent collection he bought from Eric Streiner (with Stack's help).

Having never seen anything like this booklet, before or since, I was very intrigued. I decided to add up the prices in the booklet. As I recall, the total came to about $32,000,000.00. But there was one item in the booklet that was 'P.O.R.'. That was a 1913 liberty nickel. I took the liberty of adding $3,000,000.00 for the nickel, which made the total $35,000,000.00.

Regarding the $1,000,000.00 display, I'm virtually certain there were never any $10,000,00 gold notes used in the display. I believe these are unknown in private hands. Although there may have been two separate displays, both would have contained only $10,000.00 Federal Reserve Notes. The display that Parrino bought had $10,000.00 notes from the New York district only.

I believe you misinterpreted my comments published in this week's issue when you observed that "The recreated version, later sold to Parrino, was made up of Federal Reserve Notes. -Editor"

My point was that neither the original nor recreated displays could have included gold certificates, as claimed in the newspaper article. FRNs must have been used for both editions, but that just doesn't sound as glamorous to the media.

I also wanted to expand on what Tom DeLorey said: The 1969 cut-off date applied only to the distribution of $500 and $1000 FRNs, which ceased to be issued on July 14. The 1949 date applied to $5000 and $10,000 notes.