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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 1707901, member: 11668&quot;]Plate letters on large-size Nationals are a bit weird.&nbsp; The plates were all four-subject, so a typical plate might have positions A-B-C-D.&nbsp; But there were no plate numbers.&nbsp; If a bank wore out its first plate and needed a second plate, the BEP would identify the second plate by using position letters E-F-G-H.&nbsp; The third plate would be I-J-K-L, and so forth.</p><p><br /></p><p>Actually it&#039;s even more complicated than that, because sometimes there were multiple denominations on a single plate, and each denomination got its own sequence of position letters.&nbsp; So in the case of 10-10-10-20 plates (the most common combination that included $10&#039;s), the first plate would be A-B-C-A, the second D-E-F-B, and so forth.</p><p><br /></p><p>That St. Louis bank was a large issuer, as indicated by your $10 note&#039;s bank serial exceeding 300,000, so it went through a lot of plates.&nbsp; You&#039;d need a reference book (probably Kelly) to determine whether it used sheets of 10-10-10-20 or the less common 10-10-10-10.&nbsp; Assuming the former, then your note was printed using the bank&#039;s eighth plate, with positions V-W-X-H.</p><p><br /></p><p>By the way, what happened when they ran out of alphabet?&nbsp; They started using double letters, then letters with numeral subscripts.&nbsp; After V-W-X-H, the ninth plate would have been AA-BB-CC-I, and so on.&nbsp; The sixteenth plate was VV-WW-XX-P, the seventeenth was A3-B3-C3-Q, and you get the idea.</p><p><br /></p><p>(So the truly scarce plate letters are Y and Z, since they&#039;ll never be used whether you count by threes or by fours.&nbsp; The only way to get a Y or Z plate letter is if a single bank switched between 10-10-10-20 and 10-10-10-10 plates at the right time....)</p><p><br /></p><p>And none of that was really on topic, was it?&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie9" alt=":eek:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />&nbsp; Sorry....[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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