Question about gaps in sequencial serial numbers

Hi all, great forum. This question is specifically related to 1928 $1 Silver Certificates and 1934 $5 Silver Certificates. I have recently received some of these bills and I know their history. A chuck of bills would have been handed them to my great uncle, who handed them to my grandfather who handed them to my mother, who handed them to me. For most of this time they sat in unremembered storage. It is extremely unlikely that anyone along the line would have reached in and grabbed a few of the bills. When cataloging the serial numbers, I ran across a reoccurring situation. I have a consecutive run of serial numbers (sometimes 5, 10, 15) then a bill (or sometimes a few bills) would be missing and then the run would continue. My question, what would cause these bills to be missing from the run? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

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Could we see some pics??

 

this is the first i have heard of something like that. are you 100% sure that they were solid straps of notes when your great uncle received them?? are they full straps (100 notes). sometimes people do grab a note here or there. maybe the serials were very significant to them. the only explanation i could offer is some of the notes were taken out because of printing errors but then there should be star notes in their place. but i feel that is highly unlikely. i know i have seen straps of the 1934 $5's with full runs with no notes missing. cant say i have seen personally seen the 1928 notes in full straps. hope that helps. just remember i am not an expert only an avid collector. :thumb:

 

Can someone tell me how to create paragraphs in posts. When I preview or submit a post, what I write all jams together into 1 long paragraph even though I didn't compose it that way. I'm going to need paragraphs in order to add to this discussion. The response I wrote is not understandable as a single paragraph.

 

When you're done with one paragraph and want to start another, press return.
And this happens. Press return more than once...

...and this happens.


Got it?

 

Yes, that would make sense, end paragraph When I typed this, each sentence was its own paragraph, end paragraph After each sentence I hit return twice, as you suggested, end paragraph This created a blank line between each sentence, end paragraph I have typed this post as 5 paragraphs

 

I dunno then.

Maybe someone else has the answer.

I typed each sentence as a paragraph.

Worked for me.

 

There must be a default switch somewhere that I haven't changed. Does anybody know which forum to post in to get some help?

 

To post pics try photobucket.com

 

No offense mpcusa, but are you following this conversation? STEP 1: Determine which of my settings is wrong (and yes in profile it is set WYSIWYG) that is preventing me from posting in paragraph form. If nobody specifically knows, then I would appreciate it if someone would let me know the proper forum to get resolution (the forum page does not seem to have an appropriate place to get this kind of help.)

 

I post on dozens of forums and have never had this happen to me before.

 

Let

Me

Try

this

once

more

 

Hmmm, very strange.

I never found the answer, but all of a sudden paragraphs seem to be working for me. Gremlins?

If this post turns out alright, I will return to the basis for this thread and my responses.

Thanks for your patience.

 

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Thanks for your reply, urbanchemist:

No, as a matter of fact, I'm quite sure that the bills were never bundled or strapped.

I am looking for a definitive answer to this hypothesis. Other than someone grabbing some bills out of the stack, is there any way for the following scenario?:
N84310301A
N84310302A
N84310303A
N84310304A
N84310305A
N84310306A
N84310307A
N84310308A
N84310309A
N84310310A
N84310311A
4 missing bills right here.
N84310316A
N84310317A
N84310318A
N84310319A
N84310320A
N84310321A
N84310322A
N84310323A
N84310324A
N84310325A
N84310326A

This is an actual run from the $5 SC. And when I first laid my hands on them, everything was in order (not jumbled around). Simply a gap.

 

mpcusa,

Here is a picture of a different example than what I cited in my previous post. The run begins before 05 and proceeds after 25. This gap represents 18 bills.

http://i1021.photobucket.com/albums/af334/rbmcgee/03-26-2010112655AM.jpg

I also have many examples of a single missing bill in the middle of a sequence.

 

How were these when you got them? Did they have the paper strap still around them? If they didn't odds are those notes might not have ever been there.

 

No, these bills didn't have a strap or a bundled around them when I first got them and probably never had a strap or a bundle around them (since they left the bank?, mint?)

Perhaps I'm not making my question very clear. Let me try it again.

I know that the most typical reason why bills in a sequence were missing is because those bills were either never included in a handoff or they were removed by one of the handlers. I get that.

I however, have been trying to study and understand the concept of ruined/errored/destroyed bills that never got out of the BEP facility. I'm trying to understand star notes and I'm trying to understand how all this worked in 1928 and 1934 and how that all relates to what actually got distributed to the public.

For instance, in my $5 SC example from above, could #'s N84310312A, N84310313A, N84310314A, N84310315A (the missing #'s) have been somehow discarded at BEP for whatever reason (and never distributed). If so, how would the run appear when handed to the public?

I read about star replacements, but the best I can tell, damaged bills are replaced with star bills to compensate for quantity, not to actually place replacement star bills into the place in a run where the discarded bills were from.

For instance, if you were handed a bundle of 100 fresh bills from the run I'm referring to, would your bundle include 4 star bills (where the discarded bills would have been) or would it simply be a run of 104 serial numbers to cover the 100 bills. It is my understanding (and I could be mistaken) that your bundle would most likely be the 104 serial # scenario and wouldn't necessarily contain any star bills.

Of course, what I'm talking about is what would have happened in 1928-1934 rather than what actually happens today.

After reading this post over, perhaps I didn't make it any more understandable after all.

 

Well in this circumstance being that it looks like part of an original strap I would have to speculate that at some point someone removed them after they left the bank.

The sheets as printed all end in the same numbers. Every note on one page will end with the same number. That way when the sheets are stacked and cut you end up with sequential bills because all of the sheets were sequential.... does this make sense?

 

I want to be able to argue that serial numbers N84310312A, N84310313A, N84310314A, N84310315A, never existed.

Forgetting the "likelyhood" of someone simply removing bills once distributed, is my argument even possible?

 

I don't believe so. They put the star notes right in there in order to replace any like that.
I believe it's just a matter of someone removing those bills.