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The E-Sylum: Volume 16, Number 11, March 17, 2013, Article 6

VOCABULARY WORD: TÊTE-BÊCHE

Last week I asked about the meaning of the term "Tete-Beche," which I had seen in an auction catalog description. -Editor

Lot 5454 Tete-Beche pair

Francois Velde writes:

Tête-bêche is a French expression which describes the position of two people lying, one's feet facing the other's head. It's a corruption of bêchevet, which means "double bedhead" (a bed with bedhead at each end).

Martin Purdy writes:

Looks like it's a philatelic term. It would be pronounced like "tet besh".

Martin referenced this Wikipedia entry.

Stamp_Switzerland_1910_10c_tb_pair In philately, tête-bêche (French for "head-to-tail", lit. "head-to-head") is a joined pair of stamps in which one is upside-down in relation to the other, produced intentionally or accidentally. Like any pair of stamps, a pair of tête-bêches can be a vertical or a horizontal pair.

To read the complete article, see: Tête-bêche (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%AAte-b%C3%AAche)

David Gladfelter forwarded this definition from R. Scott Carlton, The International Encyclopædic Dictionary of Numismatics (Iola, Krause Publications, 1996), p280:

“Anti-counterfeiting device on paper money which consists of a design that appears twice, each occurrence being upside-down relative to each other. Its purpose is to make counterfeiting of that note more detectable, even to the average citizen not well-versed in determining the authenticity of paper money.”

He adds:

An example is shown of the Brazilian 100 cruzeiros note, Pick 198. Literally, the term means “head-spade.”

The Stacks-Bowers cataloguer is using the term to apply to a pair of notes, one note printed upside-down relative to the other, rather than to the design of a single note.

With the diacriticals added, the term is tête-bêche.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: QUERY: WHAT DOES TETE-BECHE MEAN? (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n10a27.html)

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Wayne Homren, Editor

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