Just curious if something other then the small print run of the 81a drives the price so high? The 2006 Cleveland star has the same run size, do you think it's values will go as high?
Sometimes it is not the amount printed, but the number of them available. It is not always understood why some with more notes printed by the BEP might be harder to find in CU (for example) then a lower print number of a different note that is readily available. Or at least that is what I have found out.
Some star notes are distributed in pairs, and some in packs of 100. Only time will tell concerning the 2006 Cleveland $1 star. The star notes of today have many high profile venues to be seen/bought & sold, like eBay, Heritage, Lynn Knight and many currency dealer websites. I don't think many of these were available 30 years ago. I try to watch the BEP monthly/annual production reports to find future rarities both star and non-star. I had a really hard time finding a 2006 $1 C-G block note in CH-CU condition. With only 6,400,000 printed compared to typically 96,000,000 printed for the majority of non-star notes. I believe this may be a hard note to find 10 years from now. ....and a 81A Dallas Star in a 66 holder
+1 Most of the new issues have to be sat on for a bit to see if any real premium will come about. Ask in a few years about the Cleveland note and we may have a better answer.
It was a sheet run, so it'll reach circulation in the form of occasional notes sprinkled into regular straps--for example, yes, the star pairs often found in place of a 9999/0000 rollover pair, but also wherever else a sheet replacement is needed. In general, though, the *really* pricey $1 FRN stars from the '80s have got more going on than just a low printage. There are several more recent $1 stars with printage totals as low or lower, and they don't fetch nearly such high premiums: 2003 D..* : 320,000 2001 H..* : 640,000 1999 D..* : 640,000 (as two runs of 320,000 each) 1999 F..* : 640,000 1993 C..* : 640,000 All of these, like the 2006 D..*, were printed as sheet runs, except the 1993 C..*, which was reported as a note run. Theoretically that ought to make the 1993 C..* more common in the collector market than the others, but who knows whether it actually does....
Although the book values on these differ, I can only find these 2006 stars in pairs, and consider them equal in value.
The 2006 $1 D..* had only a single run of 640,000 printed, for sheets (i.e. pairs, mostly). The F..* had three runs printed, two of them for notes (i.e. packs). But run #1 of the F..* was another 640,000 run for sheets, so it won't come in pack form. Thus if you're collecting by runs instead of just by districts, the D..* run #1 and the F..* run #1 should be about equally tough. The J..* run #2 and the L..* run #1 were also runs of 640,000 printed for replacement sheets, so they should be in the same situation as the two runs above. Meanwhile, the G..* run #3 is the shortest run of the series, at 512,000, but it was printed for notes, so it should wind up being more common as packs will exist.
