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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 749411, member: 11668&quot;]No, no, no!&nbsp; The idea of a &quot;mule&quot; is that the two plates are from opposite sides of a transition.&nbsp; There was a change made to the plates (for the large-size mules, the plate number location; for the small-size mules in the &#039;30s, the plate number font size), and a &quot;mule&quot; is a note that was printed with a face plate from before the change but a back plate from after the change, or vice versa.&nbsp; After a while, all the old plates finally wear out, so mules stop being printed--they&#039;re a transitional variety.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Today&#039;s Fort Worth notes do indeed have plate numbers of different sizes, but that&#039;s just because the enlarged back plate number is used to distinguish Fort Worth plates from Washington plates.&nbsp; Likewise, some 2006 $20&#039;s have an enlarged face plate number to show that they were <a href="http://www.uspapermoney.info/general/soi.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.uspapermoney.info/general/soi.html" rel="nofollow">printed on the new SOI presses</a>.&nbsp; Neither of these represents any sort of transitional variety, so they aren&#039;t mules--in particular, the word &quot;mule&quot; does *not* mean &quot;note with different-size plate numbers&quot; (cf. the large-size mules where the plate number size was unchanged throughout).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Some collectors will apply the term &quot;mule&quot; to modern FRNs printed with face plates from a new series and high-plate-number back plates left over from the old series.&nbsp; These were reasonably common in the 1981 $1&#039;s, for example, which were the first series in decades to have their back plate numbers reset to #1.&nbsp; So a 1981 $1 with a four-digit back plate left over from Series 1977A can be considered a mule, as can a 1977A $1 from late in that series with a low-number back plate intended for the 1981 printings.&nbsp; At the time, the BEP mixed the plates willy-nilly, so these mules weren&#039;t too scarce.&nbsp; More recently, there&#039;s rarely any mixing of plates at series transitions, so mules of this type generally don&#039;t exist any more; but for a few series there in the &#039;80s and &#039;90s they could be found.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Other collectors of modern FRNs will try to apply the term &quot;mule&quot; to any note printed from a back plate that was also used on another series.&nbsp; For example, when the $1 silver certificates were replaced by the $1 FRNs in 1963, there was no change to the back designs, so the BEP just kept on using the same supply of back plates.&nbsp; Thus it&#039;s not too hard to find a 1957B $1 silver and a 1963 $1 FRN printed from the same back plate.&nbsp; Calling such notes &quot;mules&quot; is an incorrect use of the term, since again there&#039;s no transitional variety involved: the back plates didn&#039;t change in any way.&nbsp; Nevertheless, you can find the term used this way in some books, so be aware of what&#039;s meant by it....[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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