The BEP Money Store announced yesterday 3 new upcoming products due out later this month ,November 18th and December 1st. The series 2009 $2 8-subject Lucky Money sheet is the first of it's kind in this denomination. It is limited to 16,888 sheets. The $1 Year of the Monkey is undetermined as far as Series and District, but with a limit of 88,888 , there will be plenty to go around. Last up is Ideals in Allegory DEMOCRACY Intaglio Print that looks GREAT !! http://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/comingsoon.aspx
Wow, run the numbers on that. 16,888 sheets times 8 notes each is 135,104 notes. If they all have serials beginning 8888xxxx, then there can be at most 10,000 notes per block. So we're about to get at least fourteen different blocks of $2 sheets. And from what we can see so far, it doesn't appear that the BEP will be taking orders for particular districts/blocks. There is going to be a *mad* scramble by collectors who've gotta catch 'em all....
If enough of us order some extra, maybe we can all do some trading to get what we want? For me, based on what I think might be offered, I would want one from each block.
Seller on eBay is having a Pre-Sale on the Year of the Monkey 2016 note for $55.00 Buy-It-Now or best offer. Note sells at the BEP Money Store for $5.95. Last time I looked, they had already sold 3 of them. http://www.ebay.com/itm/2016-1-FRN-...783783?hash=item4d3ae84aa7:g:tdgAAOSwAYtWO7wK
I was just looking at eBay. That site has always attracted not-so-bright buyers. When Star Wars: TPM came out, people were bidding double on action figures that you could order and have shipped from Toys 'r' Us for less money. Even today people pay about 20% for plain, circulation $2 notes that you can get from the bank.
Now that the $2 Lucky Money sheets are on sale: If you ordered one or several, please do let us know what serials you get. Hopefully it won't be too complicated to work out what blocks exist and how many notes were printed for each....
Yeah, and it's sad. My local banks all get straps of new 2$ during the holidays. I pick up as many as I can hoping for stars and fancy #s.
The BEP quit printing series 2009 $2's back in August 2012. None of the notes or sheets came close to the serial numbers they are offering (8888XXXX)......my question is, did the BEP anticipate this sale/promotion way back in 2012 and print them then, or did they print these recently using the series 2009 $2 plates ?
My guess is that the intaglio printing was done back then, while they had the 2009 $2 plates on the presses. But the serialling may well have been done more recently. It's not unusual for intaglio-printed sheets to sit around for significant periods of time before receiving serials.
Anybody have one of these things in hand yet? Even on Ebay, it looks like nothing but pre-sales so far; no photos of actual sheets with readable serials. Normally somebody buys some in person at the BEP gift shop and gets them up for sale pretty quickly. (I'm actually surprised that these things didn't sell out near-instantly like a few other limited BEP products have done. Weird how some things catch fire and others don't....)
I ordered some at 7:58 November 18th (1st day of release) and then ordered some more on December 18th, to maybe get different districts, and I haven't seen any of them yet.
I didn't think the sold them at the BEP gift shop until after the pre-order date? I'm waiting to see if anything changes about the item description on Nov 25th. Kind of hoping they list a few district choices for ordering.
Meant to write "will order more on December 18th" In the mean time, I messaged a friend at the BEP and asked when they would be shipping the $2 Lucky Money sheets and this was their response; "The lucky money products will begin shipping today. Please allow 10-14 business days for your order to arrive." BEP SP