Hello, I never noticed small numbers on the back of the dollar bill before and just curious what the purpose of these numbers mean. Thank you.
In paper money terms it's known as a back plate number. The $1 FRN's also have a plate position letter/number, and a front plate number on the front of the note.
The Green letters & numbers are the Federal Reserve Serial numbers. The starting letter of that $1 FRN Serial will be A-L only, Federal Reserve Districts 1-12. The last letter is the accounting or Block designation. The current highest number of which is 96,000,000 and then it change from "A" to "B", to "C", etc... through "Y" (so far) depending on the series of the note being observed. BTW, if you find a "*" at the end rather than a letter, that is an accounting replacement-note (Star-note) used to replace BEP errors made and found during production in DC or FW. Hope this helps... Happy Hunting & Trading!
If you find one with the back plate number in the upper right rather than the lower right hold onto it. You've found yourself a web note. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_notes
Web press notes #'s are located in a different locations than the old and the ones of today. moneycostinmemoney is correct.
Does anyone know the range of number values possible for the Front and Back plate numbers? How high or lower do the numbers go?
They start at 1 and go up from there. These days, they typically restart at 1 every time there's a new series, so they generally don't get higher than a few hundred. In the past, they were sometimes numbered consecutively across many series, so they got well into four digits. I think the record high was something over 9000, back in the large-size era when the plates wore out faster.... On the other hand, a very short printing might use very few plates; for example, the 1963 $2's only used plates 1, 2, and 3.
How about the back plate #129 on I think the $1.00 series 1985 and 1981.They were printed on the back on the left side by mistake.
Feel free to post a picture of the front and back of your bill. It's possible you have a Web note as the plate number for them is quite small and is placed to the right of "Trust" instead of below the "E" in "One" (as can be seen in this post: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/one-dollar-bill-numbers-on-back-meaning.302173/#post-2842161).
I have two $1 bills both are 2017 series from the Cleveland reserve and both bills have the same back plate serial number! Any one up to the challenge of finding out if this is an error or how this is possible!? Any feedback will be taken seriously.
They are plate numbers. Web notes have plate numbers on the top right and not the bottom. Very normal.
You are confusing a plate number (used for many 10000s of notes) with a serial # which should be unique.
It's not a back plate serial number. Serial numbers only appear on the front. It's just a plate number for the back.
This might help. https://www.uscurrency.gov/denomina... began printing $1 notes on 50-subject sheets.