My first Web note

Part of the problem is that various posters in this thread are thinking of three or four different mutually incompatible definitions of the word "mule". Here, let me provide many off-topic paragraphs to help sort them all out.

When referring to coins, a "mule" is a type of error struck from dies that weren't supposed to be used together. Maybe it's got the obverse of a quarter and the reverse of a dollar, or something like that.

Paper money collectors don't use "mule" that way. Error notes do exist with, say, the face of a $5 and the back of a $10, but they're called double-denomination errors, not mules.

In paper money, the term "mule" originally described a transitional variety. Some change is made that affects both the face plates and the back plates, but no effort is made to ensure that old faces are always paired with old backs, or new faces with new backs. So some notes wind up being printed with an old back and a new face, or vice versa. Those notes are mules. They're a variety, not an error, since the mixing of plates was intentional--it would have been too much trouble to keep them all separate.

The trouble is that, over the long history of the BEP, several different types of plate changes have occurred. So there are several entirely unrelated kinds of mules out there, and people are sometimes confused by that.

Probably the most familiar mules occurred in the 1930s when the size of the plate numbers was increased. The old plates had tiny "micro" numbers; the new plates had larger "macro" numbers. Any note with a large number on one side and a small number on the other side is a mule.

Furryfrog's Heritage quote also mentions the large-size Elliott-White mules. That time, the size of the plate numbers didn't change, but their location on the notes did. Any note with the new Elliott-White signatures on the face, but a back plate number in the old location that was standard on Elliott-Burke notes, is a mule. (Of course, in order to identify these, you have to know the old location and new location for the BP number on each design.)

Another set of large-size mules, in the 1880s and 1890s, resulted from a change in the numbering scheme for the plates. Originally plates for each denomination and type were numbered starting at 1 (just like today); at the time, that meant that plate numbers never got higher than the low three digits. But in 1886 the BEP instead started using a single sequence of numbers to cover all plates of all denominations--these were fairly high four-digit numbers. Several years later, they got tired of that system and went back to small numbers starting at 1 for each separate design. Any note with a four-digit plate number on one side, but a one-to-three-digit number on the other side, is a mule.

Finally, another plate-numbering change took place in 1981. Before that date, the plate numbers had been increasing sequentially across many series, and were well up into four digits again. But in 1981 the depth of the plate engraving was reduced (to save ink), and the new shallower plates were numbered starting over at 1. Any note with a high number (old deep plate) on one side, but a low number (new shallow plate) on the other side, is a mule.

Again, what all of these have in common is that they're transitional varieties: an old-style plate is paired with a new-style plate.

More recently, the word "mule" has been used more broadly to refer to changes that affect only one side of the notes. Old-timers will tell you that these next examples shouldn't be called mules at all, but you can find books that call them that, so....

The best-known example of this kind is the 1963 $1 FRN printed from a back plate that was also used to print 1957B $1 silvers. The face plates were completely redone for the FRNs, but the back plates are exactly the same, and some of them were used in both series. Any $1 FRN printed from a back plate that also printed $1 SCs is sometimes called a mule.

In the following $1 FRN series, from the '60s into the '90s, it remained common for a back plate to be used in multiple series. Any time you can find two notes of successive series that share a back plate, the later of the two is sometimes called a mule.

That last definition is the one that's relevant in this thread (finally!). The 1993 web note has back plate 8, and that same plate had earlier been used to print 1988A web notes. So by this definition, it's a mule. (But "mules" of this kind are so common they may not be very interesting to most.)

There, wasn't that more than you wanted to know?

 

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@Numbers that was a great write up! I just got home and sat down to read. Thank you for the detailed explanations!

 

Thanks for the info again @Numbers - question tho...how often did they change from Macro to Micro? My $1* is a 2003 I think - @ work so I can't check (break of course)

 

They changed from micro to macro once, in the late 1930s.

From then on, all notes used the macro-size numbers until 1991, when the Fort Worth facility opened. In order to distinguish FW notes from Washington notes, the FW notes use a huge BP number that's much larger even than macro. These have nothing to do with any of the definitions of mules--it's just what FW notes look like.

 

That explains it - my $1* was printed in Fort Worth. Thanks again.
Congrats on the cool find @Baryoung & sorry if I hijacked your post

 

Thanks everyone . It turned into a very informative post

 

Most threads have been for me, but they're kind of like a Bob Ross painting - once you start one ya just never know how it'll turn out

 

That, my friend, was a BEP masterpiece! Thank you for taking the time to put all that down on 'paper'. I'm much more knowledgable today than I was yesterday. Thanks to you.