United States · Pop art · Rency

Trump / Never Surrender note, n.d.

Trump / Never Surrender

One object: a vertical pop collage of Donald Trump’s 2023 Fulton County mugshot and a $2 reverse (Declaration of Independence) photographed upright, with a manuscript Rency signature.

Catalog facts

Pick reference: Rency
Serial number: —
Signatures: Manuscript Rency (face, lower right; back, large black marker). The Treasury signatures are not readable under the overlay.
Condition: Unslabbed (private collection)
Printage: Federal Reserve $2 paper (BEP) with a Rency intervention. The face is a vertical pop collage; the back is Trumbull’s engraving photographed upright (the plate is rotated). There is no manuscript edition fraction. This record does not invent a BEP printage for the type.

Portrait-format pop face: Trump mugshot (Fulton County, 2023), “NEVER SURRENDER,” “STAND UP FOR AMERICA,” “WITCH HUNT” seal, and Rency at lower right.

Back of an FRN $2 (Declaration of Independence) photographed upright, with a manuscript Rency in black marker. No edition fraction.

The note

The face is a portrait-format pop collage on legal-tender paper: Donald Trump’s 2023 Fulton County mugshot in halftone, dark suit and red tie; behind him a height chart with 70, 60, 50, and 40; the legends “Life, LIBERTY and the Pursuit of Happiness,” “NEVER SURRENDER” in red, and, vertically at right, “STAND UP FOR AMERICA”; the Fulton County sheriff’s seal overprinted “WITCH HUNT”; currency scrollwork, paint splatters, and an orange-brown border. At lower right, a manuscript Rency. The back is the FRN $2 reverse — Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence — photographed upright, so the engraving is rotated, with a large black-marker “Rency” across the center. BEP serials are not readable under the overlay; the $2 reverse carries none. It is one collectible — face and back of the same object — not two separately catalogued notes, and not a Treasury or BEP issue. It does not duplicate Pelé / The Beautiful Game, Messi / You Have to Fight to Reach Your Dream, Life Is Beautiful / LIFE SPRAY, or Warhol & Basquiat / Life Is Beautiful.

The artist

Rency is the public name of this artist; on the paper the signature is often RENCY in capitals. The artist is an anonymous United States pop and street artist who works on genuine notes. Dealer copy that likens the work to Banksy is a sales line, not an attribution or a verified biography. This is not Rency Punnoose. The subject is Donald Trump’s mugshot taken on 24 August 2023 at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia; the legends “NEVER SURRENDER,” “STAND UP FOR AMERICA,” and “WITCH HUNT” belong to the overlay, not to a Treasury issue. This record describes the physical object; it does not value the intervention or republish auction prices.

Scarcity and printage

The back carries a large manuscript Rency; there is no edition fraction. That absence is not read here as an open edition or as a census. The vertical mugshot collage and the $2 reverse photographed upright set the object apart from the hybrids Pelé / The Beautiful Game (5/200), Messi / You Have to Fight to Reach Your Dream (2/222), and Life Is Beautiful / LIFE SPRAY (5/200), and from Warhol & Basquiat / Life Is Beautiful, the $2 intervened on both faces with printed serial F71235101A.

Population

A PMG or PCGS census for this object has not been independently verified. The BEP serial is not readable in the photographs; this record does not assign serial F71235101A from other pieces in the case. The note is shown unslabbed.