I need some help understanding the rarity of star notes based on Run Sizes and Total Printed. Earlier this week at work we received 1000 consecutive bills and I had some time so I flipped through them and found these: I looked up the serial numbers of these on http://www.mycurrencycollection.com/reference/stars/lookup and it says that these were from a run of only 320,000. But it also says Total Printed: 6,080,000. What is the difference between a run size and total printed? It says that these are rare because it came up as red, but seeing such a large number of total printed confuses me. Any help would be appreciated
im no currency expert but I think the run size is only for the district it is printed in. Which is boston ma.
I can help, theres 2 runs of stars notes for that year, the first run had 640,000, and the second run had 3,200,000 nothing rare about theses star notes, even if you have the first run, there was 3,840,000 regular notes printed, (not star notes)
Rick's information is outdated. There have been four runs of the 2009 $1 A..* printed so far: Run 1 is A00000001* to A00640000*, a run of 640,000 notes. Run 2 is A03200001* to A06400000*, a run of 3,200,000 notes. Run 3 is A06400001* to A06720000*, a run of 320,000 notes. Run 4 is A09600001* to A11520000*, a run of 1,920,000 notes. That adds up to the total of 6,080,000 printed. So your notes are from the shortest run--good find! More interestingly, runs 1 and 3 were printed as replacement sheets, which means they get into circulation the way your notes did--a few star notes sprinkled into straps of regular notes. Runs 2 and 4 were printed as replacement straps, so they'll get into circulation in the form of full straps of stars. The runs printed as straps tend to have higher survival rates in CU condition, since they're a lot easier for tellers to spot and save for currency dealers. The runs printed as sheets take more more work to find (as you found out, in hunting through 1000 notes to find three stars), so a much lower percentage of them are caught while they're still uncirculated. Thus they tend to be more valuable in the long run, by an even greater margin than their lower printage totals would indicate. The top note in your scan looks to have a significant corner fold, but the other two appear to be CU. If so, they'd probably sell for a decent premium over face value (a few tens of dollars for the pair, most likely, though I haven't been following pricing lately).
For your information a run is a pallet of 20,000 sheets which accounts for 320,000 notes - 156.25 runs consist of the total possible numbering from 00000001 to 99999999 - in early FRN runs there were gaps of 160,000 in between printings of stars but no more under LEPE system the notes are continuous in number - we will know more then the BEP completes its upgrade to the New SOI press and associated equipment. When Notes are spoiled in printing now the whole packet of spoiled notes is replaced with a star packet and it is not related to notes that they replace - like Dallas notes may be replaced with Chicago notes it just depends on what is on hand. As a paper collector of 50 years I follow such things.
Yea I accidentally bended the corner of the top bill, unfortunately. The second bill has a very tiny bend in the top right corner and the last bill is perfectly crisp. Thanks for all the info
Some of this is out of date. The 20,000-sheet standard run was increased to 40,000 in 1980, then 100,000 in 1983. In 1989 it was increased again to 200,000 sheets, but only for $1 through $20 non-star notes; the $50, $100, and all star notes continue to be printed in the 100,000-sheet standard runs (though stars are often printed in partial runs, regardless of what standard run is in use at the time). Gaps in the star notes have also followed different patterns over time. The 160,000-serial gaps that you mention ended in 1977, when the BEP quit numbering each block all the way up to 99999999 (the 160,000 missing star notes were caused by the quarter-run of regular notes numbered 99840001 and up). From 1977 to 1995 there were lots of star runs with 31 small internal gaps, due to the way the BEP used to print partial star runs (a few runs like this were also printed before 1977, but they were much less frequent back then). In 1995 they changed the way partial star runs are handled, so that gaps now appear only between runs, not within them. The new LEPE numbering has re-shuffled the relationship between serial numbers and plate positions, but so far it hasn't caused any changes to the way the BEP decides which serial numbers to print and which to skip. When they switch from 32-subject sheets to 50-subject sheets (which the new LEPE and the new SOI presses are designed to handle), we may see more substantial changes in how the serialling works.
