Tuesday Treasure Trove - Turkey

Currency Stats:

Turkey 5 Lira

Pick #155 

VF-UNC

$16.00 -  130.00

Honest Appraisal - $50.00

So here is something that is truly from a treasure trove find.  If any of you are familiar with treasure trove, it involves finding lost, buried or mislaid property in a hidden or buried place.  Well this one was found hidden in a stack of foreign notes that a dealer was selling for 50 cents a piece.  I saw this one, among others that will also get posted (the Korean notes previously posted were also found in the stack of notes) and had a slight inkling that it was worth something, so I bought it.  When I got back home and checked it out in my currency price guides, it turns out that I was correct and that it does have some value.  Unfortunately it has a few corner folds which is probably a result of people sifting through the notes in a hurry to find what they wanted which lowers the value of the note significantly.  Each fold is basically knocking off value from the note and considering that it has at most 2 folds, I would take it to be in AU condition since it is still very crisp and still has the original print feel to the note.  

The front of the note depicts Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of Turkey and founder of the republic.  You see him on almost every coin and note from Turkey, a very revered figure for Turkish people and a great statesman of modern Turkey.  The reverse has a picture of three peasant women holding baskets of hazelnuts.  Hazelnuts are apparently grown for domestic and export use in Turkey, and they are delicious!  I find that the older notes from Turkey are quite beautiful.  This is the only one that I have, but the ones that I've seen in reference guides and the like look beautiful, one day I will own more, but for now this will have to suffice. 

On a side note, my general rule of thumb for finding great and valuable notes in dealer dump bins is this: crisp, old and haven't seen it very often = value.  So for instance if you see Japanese Military Occupation notes, very few are worth any money and they usually are the majority of notes found in the dealer dump bins, therefore, ignore them.  Oh and one other thing, countries that don't exist anymore or have been rarely heard of like (Monaco, Liechtenstein, Straits Settlements, Malaya & British Borneo, ETC) will usually command higher values.  Also pre-decimal notes from current and former British Colonies also command a high value.  

Enjoy!