I am wanting to put together a $5 Bill type set and would like to know what years I would need to include. I'm not looking for varieties during a particular series just one from each series including the silver certs or red seals or whatever you all think would make a type set and it can go back before they switched to the small notes. Thanks Kent
Welcome to the Paper Money section of CT. :smile First of all you should decide if this will include, large size or small size currency or both. There are many ways to go and your budget is likely to be the biggest restriction on what you end up pursuing. These are two terrific books you should have, they list pretty much everything Series wise that will get you started and keep you going for a very long time, or until you run out of money or begin to narrow the set down to what you feel you can acquire to complete it. No one is really going to be able to list everything you might need to collect in a thread, it's too vast and there are books for that, so you just need to get the necessary guide books, start studying and learn how big the scope of your idea really is. You may also register a free account with Heritage Auctions and make use of their Auction Archives, you can peruse all kinds of notes, coins, etc. on HA, but you can sort searches by denominations, size of currency, the different kinds of notes, LTs, GCs, FRBN, FRNs, et al. I highly recommend spending time on that site just looking! Standard Guide to Small Size U.S. Paper Money by authors John Schwartz & Scott Lindquist A Guide Book of United States Paper Money by Arthur L. Friedberg and Ira S. Friedberg You will learn that each Series of notes has been assigned different catalog numbers for their Series and you can start to learn about those, one such system is the Friedberg (Fr. or F) number. Both PMG and PCGS Currency are third party grading companies that use these catalog numbers on their note encapsulation holders.
If you just want one of each design, you might try this listing (though it only includes small-size notes). Of course, there's plenty of room to be either more or less thorough, depending upon where you want to draw the line between "varieties" and major types....
