Going through some $100's I had my parents set aside as something possibly special. Upon checking Numbers uspapermoney.info site I noticed that many of these notes had serial #'s that were: bare with me as I'm new with terminology- The block run? contains serials that have different letters. For example $100 from series 1990 printed in Nov of 92 contains serials from B 960 00001 A to B 192 00000 B. Is it more desireable to have a note from the second suffix letter or the first? Is this something special? Any comments/thoughts/ideas? Did I get the terminology correct? Thanks
Looks to me like they printed blocks from B 000 00001 A through B 992 00000 F. The range you referenced was only what was printed in Nov of 1992 and I don't think when the notes were printed makes any difference. I can't see any particular block in that series (1990 $100 from NY Fed District) being worth more than another.
some folsk will collect from the 1stprinting... say the printed notes from A00000001A to A00320000. Sure that first printing is 320,000 notes. But then a month later when they print A00320001A to A65432100D ... that turns out to be a heck of alot of notes. In my book, that makes the first printing or 320,000 mean nothing. I dont care if they printed 20 notes or 320,000 in one month if they printed 40 billion in thenext month. but - some folkas will go nuts to get notes from that first printing.
I don't understand that type of collecting at all. For that matter, I don't get block collecting either. For example, you have a run where A00000001A to B10000000A is printed (pretend these aren't FRN's...works better for the example). In that case, there are 10x more AA block notes than BA block, but who cares? The 'B' is technically just another 'digit' in the serial number. Notes beginning with A9 would be every bit as rare as the ones beginning with B0.
Ya know Noost, I have really never cared about theBlock # so far. Heck judt trying to find the notes I need is hard enough...with that being said, Great question! Maybe someone will come along and have a better answer for us all?? RickieB
There's some confusion in terminology here. A "block" is all the notes with the same prefix and suffix letters; in your example there are some notes from the B..A block and some from the B..B block. A "print run" is the unit in which the BEP produces the notes; for 1990 $100's it's 3.2 million notes, so in your example there are seven print runs, namely run #31 of the B..A block and then runs #1-#6 of the B..B block. Some collectors try to get one note from each block (though not usually in the $100 denomination!); it's a challenge one level harder than collecting one note per district. On the other hand, some collectors are perfectly satisfied with one note per *series*; to each his own. Essentially nobody tries to collect non-star notes by print run, because the number of print runs in a series is typically *very* large. In the 2003A $1 series non-star notes, for example, there are 12 districts represented; or 87 blocks; or 96 groups (distinguishing all the DC/FW printings); or 1215 print runs. That last number is pretty much completely unmanageable for a collection.... The only place where print runs really matter to (some) collectors is in the star notes. The number of star runs per series is small enough that it's not ridiculous to attempt the collection; it's just a bit more challenging than one star per district. And star runs also tend to come in varied lengths, rather than all being of the same standard size the way non-star runs are, so the collection is actually a bit interesting with some runs being tougher than others. Knowing about print runs can also be useful for proofreading purposes. If the standard print run for 1976 $2's is 640,000 notes, then the number of notes printed for each district had better be a multiple of 640,000. If your reference book says there were 8,448,000 $2's printed for Chicago in that series, you know you've got a typo on your hands...checking another book will show you that the correct number is 84,480,000, which might save you from overpaying for a common note. There's not much point to distinguishing notes printed in different months, as the top post in this thread was trying to do. That 1990 $100 B..B block was in production from November 1992 to January 1993, but there's no way to know that unless you've got the monthly production reports handy; it seems odd to use it as the basis for a collection. In contrast, different blocks, or DC/FW groups, (or even print runs or face plate numbers for that matter,) can be identified just by looking at the notes, so it's at least plausible that a collector might try to obtain *all* the different ones that he could possibly find. The production figures are still nice to have (so that you can know in advance how tough your collection is going to be to finish, and so that you'll know it *is* finished when you get there), but in theory you could collect in such ways without any BEP data at all.
You are right Numbers.. i was confused. I was thinking a print run was what they printed that month, so to speak. say for example, in that month of that year, they printed A00000001A to A00000001C ... i was thining that was a print run... my confusion As alot of us regulars have pointed out recently .... there is NO dumb, silly or stupid questions! No matter how trivial the question may seem.. there are always others who can learn from it
