When you have the published "number printed" for a particular series of note, do the serial numbers run consecutively? For example, if there were 250,000 notes printed for a particular series FRN, could you have one with serial number G15000000A and another with G16000000A (ie, 1,000,000 numbers apart) or should they all fall within a range of +/- 250,000 numbers? ie, G15000000 through G15250000.
i think they 'usually' try not to skip numbers... but it does happen ... on www.uspapermoney.info they show this star note run in sept of 2007 L 000 00001 * L 006 40000 * Sep 07 and then the next batch of stars from the L district... L 032 00001 * L 064 00000 * Nov 07 to me it looks like they skipped a bunch of numbers. Now there could be a reason ... sheets for collectors ect - but i think those numbers still show up in the reported number of notes printed. So did they skip those numbers... and if they did.. will they go back and fill inthe hole later...
Not physically possibilie. Plates now have 32 positions, so all runs are in multiples of 32. In the past, when plates with 12 and 18 positions were used, 250,000 would also have been an impossibility.
I'm just using 250,000 as a rounded example. If you want it to be divisible by 32, we can use 250,016. That still leaves my question the same. Would those 250,016 be consecutive (barring star notes) for the series?
There's a website which lists the serial numbers for all FRNs. If you find that site (sorry, I don't remember the URL and don't have it bookmarked) and examine the statistics it should answer your question. I think the answer is "yes", but I'm not confident that I know the answer for sure.
I'm aware of this site: http://www.uspapermoney.info/serials/ ...however it only goes back to 1974 which doesn't do me much good because the only FRN's I have any interest in would be 1928, 1934, 1950 and 1963 series.
well i think if your thinking that far back, and looking at a relatively small printing like 250,016 lol then i would think that small printing would all be 1 solid block of serials. i think this becuase it seems that amount is smaller then a full print run - even print runs back on the smaller sheets... I dont think they do half print runs... do they? take a look at uspapermoney.info once again ... there is apage there that talks about standard print runs. If the BEP does not print anything less then a full run.. NOT counting special issues of course! .. then the ranges on that page will be able to tell you how many notes minimum were printed. now if the BEP does whatever it wants when it prints, and never minds a full, partial of frantion of a print run... then it blows my theory out of the water lol take 1950 for example... on this page it says a print run was 20,000 sheets for a $5 in the 1950 series. so if in 1950 they used a 12 note sheet, the they used 240,000 notes. so if they BEP does not print partial runs for general circulation runs... then i woudl say no to your orignial postulation. If the BEP does print partial runs, then i would say a serial or two skip is entirely possible.
I'm referring to older (ie, 1928) series FRN's where I've seen the range of known serial numbers exceed the documented quantity printed for a series. Not sure if they printed things differently back then or would have had a reason for a large gap in a run of notes...
it doesnt have to be an older series for the kown range to be outside the BEP's reported numbers lol. the BEP always has the option (weather on purpose or not) to skip serial numbers if they stop printing that denomination for any length of time. i dont follow serial number gaps to closely.. ok not at all lol.. so i dont know if they skip a block of serials in the middle of a print run. but its always possible with the human error element to skip serial numbers between print runs. take for example, the full print run was 20,000 sheets of 12 notes. So that would equal 240,000 notes. But say at 60,000 they just set the counters to 80,000 and then finish the run. i just dont see them doing that. Someone who follows this sort of thing might be better suited to give a better yes or no answer.. if it can be answer lol
Well, the reason I've been asking is because of that 1928C $10 Richmond FRN I just bought. It's well documented that there were 304,800 notes printed for this series for the Richmond district, yet the serial numbers I've observed show a larger range of serial numbers. Most of the ones I've seen, begin with E165. For example, the one I just purchased: and this one from Lyn Knight site: But I've also seen notes in this series in in the E175... range, such as this one: Just looking at the lowest and highest serial number here shows a range of nearly 1,000,000...or over 3X the reported quantity printed for this series. Just curious how that could be. Same with the 1928C $10 from Chicago. I you look at the note that Urbanchemist has: and this one on Denly's site: They are almost 11,000,000 apart, yet there were only 2,423,400 notes reported as printed for that district. Am I just looking at this all wrong?
well on those three top notes, the differance in the 1st 2 is only 50,405. then the 3rd note is way off. But if a print run was 20,000 12 note sheets, then that equals 240,000. then they stopped, and started back up skipping some serial numbers. so the last 64,800 notes were then printed which included the 3rd note. this is just one plasubile possibility. I would have to assume there could be others as well. If the accepted number of printed notes is 'X' then i would have to think someone who knows alot more about this then me, somehow figured it all out to narrow down this number. who am i to argue Another pssibility, and i cant say this is what is hapeneing with the notes above, but.... when i last looked at these light green seals in the swartz/linquist book, they listed known serial ranges and a caculated number of notes. But there were how many shades of green printed? 2... 3? On the bottom 2 notes, to me they look like different shades of green. The top note looks like its the light green variety, and the last note looks like the darker green variety (it also could just be the way the image was taken). If these two notes are from different 'green ink' issues, then that would explain the serial question. But with a much larger printage then your top 3 notes, there is a much greater chance or possibility that a block of serial numbers was skipped.
Basically. There weren't any serials skipped in these cases. But not all of the notes between your low and high examples would've been 1928C; some would have been 1928B or perhaps even 1928A. During that era, as long as the note design didn't change, the BEP used printing plates with different signatures interchangeably. So while the transition from 1928B to 1928C was going on, they had both series' printing plates on hand, and on any given days they'd grab some plates from the vault at random and print off some notes. So the serial number sequence would keep jumping back and forth between 1928B and 1928C. If you looked at a brand-new strap of 100 consecutive notes, it might very well contain some mixture of 28B's and 28C's.... This is why you can find changeover pairs and reverse changeover pairs--consecutive notes of different series, sometimes in the "wrong" order. When Series 1934 came along, with different wording on the notes, the BEP actually destroyed all the old 1928x printing plates and started over at serial 00000001A. But then the different 34A, 34B, &c. series got mixed together too.... It wasn't until the 1950 series came along that this sort of thing stopped: there's actually a last serial number for Series 1950A, and then the next number is the first serial number for Series 1950B. Mostly unrelated to the above: As a general rule, the BEP does not skip serial numbers. But this is only a general rule, having a fair number of exceptions. The big exception is that since the '50s the star notes have skipped lots of numbers all over the place, in different patterns at different times. There are smaller exceptions in the non-star notes too, but these are much less frequent. (When I finally get to answering the question about the plate positions in the other thread, I can explain that last bit better; many of the star gaps are related to the arithmetic of plate positions and print runs. But for that I'll have to come back when I'm not about to be late to class. )
answering my own question here...the fed seal was part of the engraving plates for the 1928 series (and 1934 I believe) FRN's so there's no way this could have happened.
