Official "almost" paper money thread

Listed a collection of almost's on eBay, and it almost sold.

By the way, Steve in Tampa, your note full of 8's would command a HUGE price in China. In Chinese culture, the number "4" is unlucky, and the number "8" is lucky, and the "triple 8" is unbelievably lucky. No, I'm not making this up;
no telling what you "might" get for it, in the right auction.

If you ever offer that note in China, be sure it's by auction, not fixed price. I've seen 8888+ license plates sell for $2500.

"In Chinese numerology, 888 has a different meaning, triple fortune, a strengthening of the meaning of the digit 8. For this reason, addresses and phone numbers containing the digit sequence 888 are considered particularly lucky, and may command a premium because of it." [Wikipedia]

 

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It wasn't a total loss. I won the mini-jackpot for $1600+.

Chris

 

Here's my almost. Although its still a winner of a note. Rich

 

And I ALMOST won the PowerBall matched 4/5 missed the 5th by 1 and missed the powerball # by 2 won a hundred bucks but it sure wouldve been nice to hit the JP because it was up too 400 million at the time.

 

I hate it when some rich doctor (Orlando) wins and then gives all the money to charity.

Chris

 

Chris, wasn't that the same doc who dated three sisters named Faith, Hope, and Charity, and fooled around with Faith and Hope after he married Charity, until she finally filed for divorce?

 

My wife found this for me. So close I shed a tear. I'll keep it, but unfortunately it's in bad shape. Has a lil rip on the top.

 

Here is a ebay example..

 

My best almost to come through my cash register was 69698696

 

That's not even close lol. Trinarys are annoying to see on eBay unless its kinda cool. I sold a trinary $10 bill for $18 serial number 68682222 must've been pretty interesting cause a couple ppl were bidding on it.

 

The problem with this, (missing by 1 number) is just an illusion. If your ball was not selected it doesn't matter if the missing ball is 1 number away or 30 numbers away they are EXACTLY the same. It just LOOKS like you almost hit it.

 

It would be interesting to know how many mainstream "collectible" numbers are in any given block of notes. Is this possible? Someone may compute that, say, 3.8% of all notes in a standard block carry a premium for one reason or another; I'm not so interested that they have wildly-varied valuations, just the overall proportions of premiums.

 

Well, if we simplify matters by pretending that they actually print all serials from 00000001 to 99999999, then in that block of 99,999,999 serials there would be:

6 ladders
9 solids
9 single-digit low numbers
12 progressive ladders (things like 00012345)
90 two-digit low numbers
720 seven-of-a-kinds
900 three-digit low numbers
9000 four-digit low numbers
9999 radars
9999 repeaters
11,430 binaries
22,680 six-of-a-kinds

...and at that point we may already be past the boundary of "mainstream collectible numbers", depending on who's defining that term.

Some of the above categories overlap each other, of course, so we can't just add up the whole list to get a total; but just from the size of the numbers we're getting, we can estimate that there are very roughly 50,000 different serials of interest. That means something on the order of 1 in every 2000 notes would have a moderately collectible serial, or 0.05% of all currency. Feel free to adjust the number up or down depending on what you think "collectible" should mean.

Be careful, though; some of the not-so-collectible serials commonly mentioned are massively more common than any of the above. That block of 99,999,999 serials would also contain:

90,000 five-digit "low" numbers
360,000 almost-radars (one digit wrong)
360,000 almost-repeaters (one digit wrong)
408,240 five-of-a-kinds
695,520 trinaries
900,000 six-digit "low" numbers
1,814,400 serials with eight different digits
4,589,550 four-of-a-kinds

...so if you're willing to go far enough, something close to 10% of all serials might be "Ebay special", shall we say.

A difficult type to count are the birthday serials, 08291955 or the like. I don't think anybody really collects these the way some people collect, say, radars; but lots of collectors would like to have their own birthday on a note. If you figure that only dates in the last 100 years are likely to be of interest to anybody, then that's 36,500 notes per block--or twice that if you'll accept the 19550829 format, or vastly more if you're willing to count weird orders and "almosts" that don't use all eight digits.

(Okay, now who's going to check my math?)

 

I was one digit away from winning an $18k lottery jackpot. I needed a 36 to win. I had 35.
Still won $72 though.

 

WOW I wonder how you got your screen name. If I mark this as best answer will it close the thread cause this response deserves it lol

 

Your absolutey right cause even though it was 1 and 2 numbers off the balls are completely sporadic so it really don't matter if I was just one off but like you said its the illusion.. I can say I was close to hitting the powerball and getting struck by lightning

 

I had this same thread a few years ago
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/almost.224497/

 

well I was ALMOST right about there not being another thread like it

 

heres my ALMOST for today

 

For member "Numbers," exactly what I had in mind, especially since you included the names of the varieties, too. Thanks!

One small point - how many star notes would you expect in a block of 99,999,999?

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Don't forget what I said about notes with lots of "8's" being especially lucky to the Chinese. I'd auction them on eBay Singapore if it still exists - an English-language venue with lots of Chinese citizens, and first-class postal service.