Please Check Out These Bill I was responding to a 2 Dollar bill post this morning and while i was looking a some bills I have I noticed a few inconsistencies I could not explain. What are anyone's opinions. Are the plates different sizes? Is one of them a fake? Thanks for taking a look.
Thanks for the response. If you look at the second picture I have lined up the left edges of both bills. The right edges do line up, the bottom bill is not as wide. The last picture is a close up of this difference. What's up with that? Allen
When printing these was stamp/seal pressed last. I notice that on the second example the seal is shifted to the left and is over the upright on the T in TWO. The first (top) example has the seal placed to the right of the upright in T.
:hammer: From observation I question the lack of fiber details in the background of these notes. These should be apparent in the second blow up. Maybe its just my eyes.
No...they are not fake! The Face check numbers check out as well as the SN spread! It could quite simply be that the cutting process was off some what or someone trimmed some small paper tear from the borders. Both notes look EF to me with values around $10-$12 each max. RickieB
Thanks for the input. I am still very interested in why one bill is wider (in the printing not the overall width) then the other bill. This would have to be a change in printing plates right??? Thanks Allen
As far as I can tell the width of the actual printed portion of both bills is pretty close to identical, one was just cut at a slightly wider point. Can easily be explained by normal variations that occur in the cutting process when individual bills are cut out from the uncut sheets. The wider bill might just not have been cut as precisely and/or the narrower bill was just trimmed more closely due to a small tear (or just normal variation). The printed portion of the 1953 A does look slightly narrower (VERY slightly, the printed portion isn't quite lined up either so the zoom makes the difference look more than it actually is) than the 1953 but still within what looks like a normal variance in the printing process. Multiple printing plates are used for each new series; it wouldn't be unusual for one to be slightly off in comparison to a different series, but not by very much. It looks within tolerance to me.
The printing plates are all duplicated from the same master, though, and they don't have nearly that much variation. But these bills have been through a lot since they were printed, and it's not unusual to observe a bit of variation due to paper shrinkage...especially on pre-1957 notes, which were printed on damp paper anyway and shrunk a bit when drying at the BEP. (If you compare a 1953 $2 to a 1963 $2, there'll be much more pronounced differences; the whole master design had to be redone in slightly reduced size, to allow for the fact that the later notes were printed on dry paper and weren't going to shrink between printing and cutting.) If we were talking about, say, early large-size notes, where each plate was individually prepared, then Troodon's explanation would be spot on. But I don't think that even lasted into the 20th century....
OK, that makes more sense to me lol... nm what I said then. Anywho main thing is the difference doesn't mean they're fake.
Thanks to all that have responded. I am not a big note collector and know very little. I have a hard time keeping up with coin studies. Again thanks for everyones input. I have learned a great deal from the discussions and I also feel very comfortable with the fact that the notes are "not" fake. Take care and may you all get star notes the next time you hit the bank...haha. Allen
