Hey all, I was comparing my Woods White and Speelman White 1923 $1 notes. While comparing margins, I noticed that the size of the obverse designs were actually different! Please note that I am not referring to the margins. I couldn't understand why that would be. I made sure the notes were lined up correctly, and waves or bend in the paper did not affect my measurements. After checking several times, I am convinced that they are two different sizes. I then thought perhaps one of the notes shrunk more than the other. But then checking the reverse of the notes, they were identical. Do you suppose they could have remade the entire engraving plate to accommodate the new signatures? Here are the pics:
While paper can (and does) shrink (occurring during the paper-making phase prior to the printing phase of production), a printed design doesn't shrink after it's been printed. So you can rule that out. I'd suggest trying to do some research to see if there are any known 'mules' for the Series, especially since there are three different signature combinations for this Series. However, from just a quick cursory search, I didn't find any results, so this may not explain the discrepancy you've noticed. Incidentally, the back plate of the Series 1923 Silver Certificate are the same (unless there is a minute hidden design to differentiate them) to that of the Series 1923 Legal Tender notes, which also carry Speelman | White signatures.
Interesting. When I compared the reverse designs of both notes, they appeared to be the same size. So I can pretty much rule out shrinkage. As a side note, the overall size of the paper on the Speelman/White note is larger than the paper on the Woods/White note. I aligned the design on the left side, and you can see the difference on the right side. The obverse design on the Speelman note is smaller than the Woods note by about 2 to 3mm. I've added some lines at key points in the design to help bring out the size difference. The line on the left is aligned to the left-most edge of the borders on both notes. Then I simply copy/pasted that same line to different parts of the note. I don't have any 1923 Legal Tender notes to compare it to. I've been looking to acquire one, and this might be a good reason to start seeking one out. Frankly, I'm not quite sure what to make of it.
You should rule out 'shrinkage' for the reason I gave before, not because of any measurement of printed design features. Sometimes dies are re-engraved and the design elements are often only slightly changed on a very, very small scale. This might be considered a security feature, or help printers distinguish dies, although they usually use visible plate numbers to identify them, and it's more to the plates numbers in a transition between dies where the idea of a mule comes from. While some changes could be tiny, others may be more noticeable depending on what they may have changed and result in a difference being noticeable when compared together as you have. You can also try measuring individual design features between the two notes to see how or which of those are the same scale or different, such as the signatures, the denomination numbers, or how many tiny engraved lines there are in the decorative boarder along the top under the words "silver certificate" running the width of the note. Doing so may help you narrow down what if any changes there may exist and account for the overall difference you found. Determining if its an actual mule or not and if any even exist for the series remains my recommended avenue to pursue and at least rule out. Heritage Auctions: Mule Note
Thanks for the tips krispy. I'll let you know what I find tomorrow. When this note was printed, the reverse was printed before the obverse. Is that right?
It's just paper shrinkage. Remember, the paper was dampened before the back printing and then dried, and then dampened again before the face printing and then dried again. Small variations in the size of the printing are common for this reason, since not every sheet shrunk by exactly the same amount after being printed. The above applies to all notes printed prior to the 32-subject sheets. All of the 32-subject printings, from Series 1957 onward, have been printed by the dry intaglio process, so this sort of thing doesn't happen any more. (That's why all the designs were re-engraved when the 32-subject printings started--they had to make all the engravings a bit smaller to compensate for the fact that the notes didn't shrink after printing any more.)
I thought that might have been the case. That's why I was wondering if the reverse was printed first. If the reverse was printed first and the note then shrunk, then the reverse design would also be smaller. The reverse designs are the same size on both notes, however. If the note shrunk after the obverse was printed, then both the obverse and reverse designs would be smaller. The only way I can fathom the obverse to be smaller and the reverse to be the same size, is if the obverse was printed first, the note shrunk and then the reverse was printed. But I don't think that's the order it went.
As Derek said, paper shrinkage caused the slightly different widths for both faces. There were no mules printed for $1 1923 SCs, and the dimensions of each subject on the plates were identical because they were all created from the same master die. Funkee:- Backs are printed first and then the faces. Typically the back designs were smaller than the face designs to provide a little more room when
The paper expanded and shrunk multiple times, as it was dampened before each printing and dried afterwards. If you compare these two notes to lots of other 1923 $1's, you should find additional small variations in the sizes of both the face and back designs, with no particular pattern. On some earlier large-size note types, variations like this actually do go back to the printing plates, as each plate was individually prepared from master dies of the separate design elements (borders, portrait, &c.) and so the alignment of these elements wouldn't be identical on every plate. But I'm pretty sure that practice ended *long* before Series 1923....
"But I'm pretty sure that practice ended *long* before Series 1923...." Steel-roll ransfer plates was still a common process in the 1920s, but plates then were also being made using electrolytic deposition. The latter became the standard in the 1930s.
But were they still rolling in individual design elements one at a time, as opposed to using a single master of the whole note design? I thought that had ended decades earlier....
