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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 590057, member: 11668&quot;]Yeah, I&#039;m probably going to be on the &#039;Net very intermittently for a while.&nbsp; Fortunately, today I happen to have an hour or two in front of a computer....&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie6" alt=":cool:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>About the plate numbers: As you&#039;ve noticed, the BEP&#039;s current generation of presses use four plates in rotation, so you get a cycle of four plate numbers repeating over and over again.&nbsp; Your particular straps seem to have used four *consecutive* plates, 21-22-23-24, but that doesn&#039;t always happen; sometimes they just grab four random plates out of the vault.&nbsp; (I remember seeing back plates 25-27-29-31 and 30-32-33-34 in a few of the straps of 2003A $2&#039;s I&#039;ve gotten, for example.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Jumps in the plate number sequence happen because the printed sheets are inspected after each stage of the printing process.&nbsp; The backs are printed first, and then an inspector might pull an occasional sheet out of the stack if it&#039;s a bit smeared or something.&nbsp; Next the intaglio portion of the faces are printed, and there&#039;s another inspection where some sheets can be pulled.&nbsp; Note that all of this happens before there are any serial numbers on the notes--indeed, before these sheets are even assigned to any particular print run of serial numbers--so there are no star notes or anything like that involved.&nbsp; The bad sheets are simply pulled and destroyed, leading to jumps in the sequence of plate numbers.</p><p><br /></p><p>Incidentally, the new super presses that the BEP&#039;s supposed to be installing and testing now will use *three* plates instead of four.&nbsp; So be on the lookout for new straps that use a cycle of three plate numbers; that&#039;ll probably be the first sign that the new presses are in use.&nbsp; There might even be straps that cycle through three back plates but four face plates, or vice versa, if the BEP allows a batch of sheets to be back-printed on one press type but face-printed on the other....&nbsp; (If you go back several decades, you can find consecutive runs of notes that alternate between two plates, or that all come from the same plate, depending on what sort of press was in use at the time.)</p><p><br /></p><p>What I&#039;ve always wanted to find is a short run of consecutive notes that shows *more* than four different back (or face) plate numbers.&nbsp; This would happen very rarely, when a couple of different batches of printed sheets were stacked on top of each other to be run through the serialling operation.&nbsp; But in theory such notes ought to exist, occasionally....</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Nope.&nbsp; The March run ended at 00320000, and the April run started at 03200001, with a gap of 2,880,000 unusued serials in between.&nbsp; Every star run always begins at a multiple of 3,200,000 (the size of a full run) plus one, even if the previous run was a partial run.&nbsp; And since 320,000 notes (=10,000 sheets) is a fairly common partial run size, this gap between 00320000 and 03200001 seems to come up once or twice per series, in some denomination and some district.&nbsp; And every time it happens I get exactly this question....&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie11" alt=":rolleyes:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />&nbsp; See my thread from a few weeks ago on serial numbering and plate positions if you want way too many details about this stuff.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks.&nbsp; I may need it, judging by the rather complete lack of jobs to apply for that I&#039;ve been finding....&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie4" alt=":mad:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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