On August 10,1976 Just two weeks after receiving his long-awaited status as a permanent U.S. resident—which the Immigration and Naturalization Service had steadfastly denied him during a four-year bureaucratic battle—John Lennon shlfted $10,000 from his account at Chase Manhattan to the London-based Barclays Bank. The reason for the lavish transaction, whether It was celebratory or stealthy, remains unknown. What Is known, however, is this: the $10,000 signed instrument, presented here, reigns as the only Lennon personal check in existence.
As Beatles collectors are well aware, the Lennon checks one uniformly comes across are those issued in relation to "Apple Records" or "Lennon Productions" by two British institutions—National Westminster Bank Limited and District Bank Limited. Nowhere on them is Lennon's fuU name printed out by the Issuer to signify a personal account, as it is in the upper left here: "John Lennon" (Unlike most personal checks, no address is given for Lennon's then-resldence in the Dakota apartment building off Central Park—presumably, a privacy tactic to ward off the sort of deranged individual who later tracked him down there and murdered him on December 8,1980.) The froiit and reverse are filled out with blue-ballpuint ink in another hand, reverse reading, "For Deposit to the acct of John Lennon #051-843 501- 1 Barclays Bank of N.Y.W above penciled figures of "$328,664.95" and "$84,975.75." Lennon's front-side signature is a magnificent black-ink examd pie graded PSA/DNA MINT 9, and the 6" x 2-3/4 check demonstrates clean, sharp-edged, highly presentable condition with the usual vertical fold lines and upper-left staple mark.
This one-of-a-kind John Lennon personal check from the very person who had originally purchased the item from a Lennon associate back in 1976. At that time, the rock icon and peace prophet was enjoying the early days of a self-imposed exile from the limelight that lasted roughly from the birth of son Sean in October of 1975 to the release of Double Fantasy in November of 1980—mere weeks before his heartbreaking death. Authenticated, encapsulated and graded MINT 9 by PSA/DNA.