Ploughman Scan Survey (PSS) progress

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The Ploughman Scan Survey

The question of how many Currency Commission Consolidated (Ploughman) banknotes are likely to have survived, and the proportion of surviving notes for each bank has long been a topic of speculation and discussion. The Ploughman Scan Survey aims to address these questions

A survey is likely the best way to determine the answer. This depends on the collecting community out there recording every note they see, and posting the information. Notes need to be recorded as images to avoid errors in transcription.

I invite members and visitors to post a pic (or link to pictures) of any Ploughman notes they have come across, take a snap with your phone, camera, scanner, whatever and post it here, or email the pic to lists AT irishpapermoney DOT com for inclusion.

Every banknote counts.

EDIT: I've been asked to define the key letter codes I'm using to identify the additions.
£1 notes: BA, Bank of Ireland; HA, Hibernian; MA, Munster & Leinster; NA, National; EA, Northern; PA, Provincial; RA, Royal Bank; UA, Ulster.
£5 notes: use K in place of A, hence BK etc.
£10 notes: use T in place of A, hence BT etc.

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A progress report thread for the PSS

The Ploughman Scan Survey (PSS) is a continuing survey which seeks to record all the surviving Currency Commission Consolidated (Ploughman) bank notes.

The PSS Changelog and Survey Report Threads are in the Ploughman Survey Forum. Also, the additions listed in this thread are listen there in greater detail. Users need to be Registered to view and post in this forum.

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The first results of the survey will be published shortly in the PSS Survey Report Thread.

These results will comprise exact figures for all the Ploughman notes recorded of each denomination for every bank in the first wave of the survey, and a detailed analysis of these Data. It will give an insight into the possible numbers of notes remaining, and an accurate reflection of the relative rarity of notes of each Type.

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April and May were both good months for recording Ploughman notes.
Two sizable collections and several smaller groups were added, with most of the notes being new to the census.

June promises to be good too, with 30+ notes being offered in auction in Dublin, almost all of which are new to the census.

As ever, there continues to be a steady trickle of single notes being sent in, particularly £1 notes.
The percentage of £1 notes recorded continues to rise, and is now over 3% of the total outstanding number of notes.

The survey depends on the banknote collecting community, so keep sending scans of your notes

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The Whytes auction on June 13th added some nice fresh material to the survey, 34 notes which had not previously been recorded.
Most of these were £1 notes.

In addition there will be another collection to be looked at next week, also mostly £1 notes.

A steady trickle of notes new to the census turns up on ebay, a couple a month at least.

Ebay also serves to establish the market price for lower grade common £1 and £5 notes—anything overpriced doesn't sell—with notes in genuine auctions attracting a good number of bids.

Edit 24.06.15: Three more £1 notes recorded — ebay again!
Edit 30.06.15: One £1, and a £5 turned up in an old auction catalogue.

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Up to July 8, five new BoI Ploughman £1 notes were seen, all on ebay.
Ebay has proven to be a good source of a steady trickle of new material.

Edit: 24.07.15
One £5 note added, from an ebay listing.
30.07.15
Added a really low grade Munster & Leinster £5 note.

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A few good additions to be made in August — a collection of £1 notes for scanning

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Provincial Bank Robertson £1 note spotted today on the web, kicks off August.

20 years ago the Robertson signature was considered to be one of the rarer signatures. A good few have turned up since then—still one of the scarcer notes to obtain though.

Edit 07 Aug:
Two more £1 notes recorded off the web.

Edit 08.08.15
Added a collection of £1 notes, 31 notes in all.

Edit 15.08.15
Added four £1 notes this week, all very low grade.

Edit 24.08.15
£5 x 3 , £10 x 1 also added in August.

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Added 3 £1 notes today, plus another £1 and £5 which had been recorded long ago but without images. A nice end to August for the PSS.
August has been quite a good month for the Ploughman census, with £70 face value added, mostly in £1 notes.
A detailed breakdown by bank is in the Ploughman Banknote Survey (PSS) section.

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September running total: £66 fv.

September kicks off with the addition of three £1 notes, all from web sources. = £3.

EDIT: 14.09.15 Added 2 x £5, 6 x £1 = £16
EDIT: 16.09.15 Added £1.
It's a slow month..., nothing at all in the bigger auctions this time round.
EDIT: 26.09.15 Added 1 x £5, 2 x £1 = £7

EDIT: 28.09.15
I wrote too soon, Whytes auction History, Literature & Collectibles 17 october 2015 has 26 Ploughman notes in it. Two are already recorded in PSS, leaving 24 notes with a face value of £50.
£1: BA, 8; MA, 2; NA, 8; PA, 1; RA, 1.
£5: HK, 1; NK, 1;.
£10: PT, 1; MT, 1.

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October running total: £12 face value.

23.10.15
Added £1 x 10 as below. Total face value £10
HA x 3; MA x 1; NA x 4.

October has been a light month so far.

Edit: 26.10.15
Added two more £1 notes, both off dealers' lists.

Edit: End of the month. Things are getting lean!

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November running total: £75

10.11.15
Four £1 notes spotted in an auction gets us going. BA, NA, HA, PA.

Edit:12.11.15
Added a £5 and another £1, spotted on ebay.

EDIT: 18.11.15
Added 28 notes previously not recorded, including some images, old data recorded from Whytes auctions in 1995—2001. Many other notes in the catalogues have turned up subsequently, but these 28 had not been added to PSS previously. A nice find!

Total: £1 x 23, £5 x 1, £10 x 3.
Fv = £58

EDIT 22.11.15
6 £1 notes spotted in an on-line auction. All new to PSS. Grades mostly VG.

EDIT: 27.11.15
Added one £1 note, spotted in a web auction.

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December 2015: Running total for December: £1 x 10, £5 x 3, £10 x 2 = £55 face value.

Last month I received a usb with about 83 Ploughman scans on it. This feedback was a direct result of the Coin News article I wrote on the PSS, and it is much appreciated. A detailed breakdown of the notes follow.

Feedback of this kind will keep improving the PSS into the future.

Notes new to the survey were added as follows: £1 x 9; £5 x 3, £10 x 2 = £54 face value.
£10 x 2
MT x 1; NT x 1

£5 x 3
HK x 2, NK x 1

£1 x 9
BA x 4; NA x 2; RA x 2; UA x 1, a nice high grade Lester signature note.

Edit 30.12.15
Added £1, BA spotted on ebay.

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January 2016: Total for January: £49 face value.
£1 x 4, £5 x 3, £10 x 3

Spotted two Pound notes on ebay:
£1 x 2
BA x 1; MA x 1

EDIT: 25.01.15
Added £37 FV images scavenged from old dealer's lists:
2x £1; 3 x £5; 2 x £10.

Not much else showing up this month.

Edit: 31.01.16
I wrote too soon!
£10 National Bank spotted online! Low grade, but a tenner is always significant.
£10 x 1

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February 2016: Running total for Feb: £1 x 40, £5 x 9, £10 x 5 = £135

04.02.16
February starts off with a few nice notes:
£1 BA spotted in an auction.

Plus: £1 x PA; £1 x NA; £5 x PK recorded from a collection.

05.02.16
BK £5 note added

EDIT: 08.02.16
Recorded an old collection as follows:
£1 x 20; £5 x 4; £10 x 1
FV = £50

EDIT: 21.02.16
Spotted a £1 note on ebay.

EDIT: 25.02.16
Recorded a group of notes, including two nice grade £10 notes: BoI and ML.

BA x 2, BK x 2, BT x 2;
HA x 4;
MA x 3, MK x 1, MT x 2;
NA x 3;
PA x 2;
RA x 2.

£1 x 16; £5 x 3; £10 x 4
FV = £61

A nice group added to the census.

EDIT: 29.02.16
£32 face value added to the census at the February Dublin Coin Fair this year, including an Ulster Bank £10 note in good Fine grade.

£1 x 12; £5 x 2; £10 x 1. FV = £32.

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Generally, it will be seen that the number of £1 notes recorded relative to the other denominations is increasing.
This is to be expected in the long term, as smaller collections are added into the database.

Once again, a big thank you to all the collectors and dealers who are supporting the survey project.
We're nearly at the point where some more results are worth publishing, most likely as part of another article in Coin News.

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A good haul for February so far. We'll see if anything interesting turns up at the Dublin Coin Fair this weekend.

It will be an interesting weekend in Dublin, with a General Election on Friday, and the fun of the election count on Saturday—should make it home just in time for the results!

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£32 face value added to the census at the February Dublin Coin Fair this year, including an Ulster Bank £10 note in good Fine grade. Additionally, images were added for a further 19 notes previously recorded without images being available at the time, one of these going way back over 20 years!

Breakdown: £1 x 12; £5 x 2; £10 x 1. FV = £32.

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March 2016: Total for March.
£1 x 15; £5 x 1 = £20 face value.

March starts off with two £1 notes recorded off a well known auction website. £2 in total.

EDIT: 12.03.16:
A few newly recorded notes in the forthcoming DNW auction, and from a couple of sales lists. £8 in total:
£1 x 8.

EDIT: 17.03.16:
Added £1 x 1; £5 x 1 = £6 face value

EDIT: 29.03.16:
£1 x 4 notes added, all BA, including a nice fresh about EF, and a nice gVF.
Good to see Ploughmans turning up in this grade, hopefully no one will iron it!

I'll do a report on the numbers of notes seen in each grade soon. It should make for some interesting reading.

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I've been looking at the grades of the notes lately.
I have about 2000 notes to grade there.

One of the interesting things about the Ploughman Scan Survey data images subset is the relatively few £1 notes recorded with graffiti on them—I remember lots of Ploughmans with writing on them in the old days.

There are also some other trends emerging: people are still bleaching notes, with less skill (if you can call it that) than they did 30 years ago! Some really dopey cretins out there. I've seen a good spread of notes that have been bleached since I first recorded them—ebay is becoming a wasteland of these.