I came across this $5 bill in my change and I had a dealer look at this and he told me this may be a color wash solvent error from when the press was being cleaned before a print run.. He said the purple is from the 5 on the lower right side. Anyone one know anything about these or if they are worth anything?
rickmp, It could be from being washed in a washing machine, if the color was an orang-yellow. I have seen some that were in a old wallet, that was soaked, and the leather stained the currency. So, I feel it was not at the point of printing either. I also have seen dye stains to, and it could be possible that this is the problem. We will never know one way or the other.
I think what he means is that back in the late 1700s, some schmoe named Hissy McSwinkle was walking in the woods of Appalachia and dropped a 1794 silver dollar while going through his pockets looking for a flint. Clumsy like most McSwinkle's were in those days, he dropped it and never looked back. The coin laid there in the forest and over decades it was buried under inches of leaves, branches and dead trees. Over the next couple of centuries, wild boars and annoying large birds walked and crapped all over this land... making it more fertile than Aphrodite. By 1994, this very land was purchased by an optimistic, but unfortunate looking flax farmer by the name of Shabby McGee. His flax plants grew mighty tall in the rich crap filled soil; so mighty and tall that one could get lost in there chasing quail with a harpoon. The flax plants slowly but surely absorbed minuscule amounts of silver from the coin, which laid there 3 feet under the surface. Shabby wanted to sell the flax for linen, but his twice inbred brother-in-law wanted to keep it for himself. To settle the feud, they played rock-paper-scissors. Shabby won, as he had the rock and his brother had the paper. Back then rock beat everything. Shabby sold the flax plants to the local linen supplier, owned by McGee's 3rd cousin twice separated Shilp Von Blintstock. Shilp's factory turned the silver flax into the finest linen money could buy. Fancier than a bottle of 'shine with 3 X's on it. That linen was then purchased by the paper company Crane & Co. who supplies the BEP with paper for printing. Tiny, tiny amounts of silver made their way into that finest of linen, which was eventually formed into the $5 bill the OP has in his hand. Then that $5 bill got some dye on it. Post. Mint. Damage.
The Mint is a maker of coins, and the BEP is a type of mint that prints paper, stamps, and other papers, right. Both use a type of press, to make their products. Right? So, it post damage, man made or otherwise. If an ink dye error, could be. I was a printer for about six years. Set type by hand, operated vertical lift press, ran offset presses, Linotype machines, paper cutters, drills, and staplers, and etc. Tell me how?
The point is that the BEP is a printer, not a mint. It is not even a "type of mint". Minting is the production of coins. The BEP does not make coins and has never made coins. The US Mint has never produced a piece of paper money. It is irritating to some paper money collectors when coin collectors use their terminology instead of the already established paper money terms. It makes them sound like tourists.
