do they 'need' another excuse to print another source of revenue sucking the hobby dry? on the other hand.. that is a good question.
The Mint has issued in the past coin and currency sets. The commems on the currency are stamped "Specimen" RickieB
...Imagine trying to explain to the 18 year old chick at the register that the brand new "Korean War 54th Annv." $10 bill is indeed real????
Heck I had one call the (19year old) manager because she didnt think the 1 dollar washington dollar coin was real.
All proceeds from the sale of coins are deposited in the US Treasury. All proceeds from the sale of US Paper Money are deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank and the US only gets reimbursed for the cost of printing them. Not sure how they are handling things like the uncut currency sheets, but imagine that above 2 sentences play a key role why we don't see much in the way of commemorative currency. PS. Technically, the Series 1976 $2 bill was a commemorative issued for circulation. PSS I imagine the BEP could issue Legal Tender Notes (the laws still exist on the books permitting those), but I don't know what kind of politics get in the way of that.
i could be mistaken, but from what i read on the LTN's, the law states they MUST keep a certain amount in circulation, and that the law is satisfied with circulating LTN 100's
That law is why I often wonder if the feds will reissue $100 Red seals that are still in good condition. I guess I should send them an e-mail one day asking.
ZThe thing i think of about those $100 LTN's is this - the feds must have printed a ton of them years ago, and as notes come in that are pulled for shredding, they just release a new batch of the older notes. Just a thought, but who knows. Eventually, though, if the above thought is true, they will STILL need to print more - IF they intend on satisfying that law.
This was true until 1994, when Congress finally got around to repealing that provision. The remaining vaultful of red-seal $100's were all shredded in 1996. Collectors had asked for them to be auctioned off in some way, a la the GSA sales of silver dollars, but Congress hadn't thought that far ahead: in the absence of any law authorising USNs, the Treasury couldn't legally release them. That also shoots down the idea of red-seal commemoratives, I'm afraid. More to the point, though, is that it's much more time- and labor-intensive to create a new banknote design than a new coin design. It seems unlikely that the BEP would be able to turn a profit (or even break even) on limited-edition commem currency, simply due to the overhead involved in the intaglio engraving and printing. Witness the intaglio-printed Declaration of Independence currently available from the BEP's online store...for $200. (And that didn't even involve any portrait/vignette engraving!)
oops .. let go some notes that should have been kept gatzdon? that would really suck!!! Also, i never really thought about the work (ie cost) that goes into engraving the dies for those notes. When i look at the $2 note, i do not see engraving, i see art!!! it was a very well done vingette!
"More to the point, though, is that it's much more time- and labor-intensive to create a new banknote design than a new coin design." It isn't necessary to create new plates for a commemorative bill. Just change the seal/serial number's color and/or overprint them, as was done for the Hawaii notes.
