DBR 229a Study

The flight of a Black Eagle – Friedberg # 229a

© DBR Currency 2007

I reviewed 229a sales over the past several years, to gauge value vs. grade.  This is considered the rarest of the Black Eagles, with signatures of Vernon and McClung, the date running vertically to the right of the seal.

All of these notes have been graded by a Third-Party Grading (TPG) firm, as will be shown later.  The resulting summary of price vs. numerical grade is shown in the following graphic.

The chart shows that prices jump quite a bit for notes in AU+ (50-58) condition.  There are always outliers – for example, I bought an XF 45 for $150.  On the other hand, I bought a couple of notes for over $4,000 because they were sold as VF-XF – only to come back in much lower grades from PMG.  (Of course this is how I learn who to trust and with who to do more business!)

Perhaps surprisingly, the cost of 229a’s hasn’t changed with time over the past 4 years.  This could be because as the population has grown, so has the overall census count, rendering it less rare.  The following chart shows price vs. time for Fine-15 notes.

This non-trend was typical of the different grades – since 2002, there has been no obvious trend of 229a prices over time for a given grade. Even when grades are “clumped” there’s no obvious trend, as the following chart shows for clumped VFs (20, 25, 30 and 35). I would have analyzed super-high-grade 229a’s over time, but the sample size was too small.

Prices also don’t show much difference between grading services, as the following charts indicate.

This is the most meaningful TPG data, as most of these notes were graded by PMG. However, some notes were graded by CGA, as shown in the following chart.

Likewise, a few notes were graded by PCGS, as shown below.

In conclusion, it does not appear that 229a prices have changed much over the past 4 years. This is probably the result of offsetting market factors – increasing demand offset by increase availability as measured by census count.

It also appears that prices are not very dependent upon grading service.