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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 2642228, member: 11668&quot;]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:</p><p><br /></p><p>6 ladders</p><p>9 solids</p><p>9 single-digit low numbers</p><p>12 progressive ladders (things like 00012345)</p><p>90 two-digit low numbers</p><p>720 seven-of-a-kinds</p><p>900 three-digit low numbers</p><p>9000 four-digit low numbers</p><p>9999 radars</p><p>9999 repeaters</p><p>11,430 binaries</p><p>22,680 six-of-a-kinds</p><p><br /></p><p>...and at that point we may already be past the boundary of &quot;mainstream collectible numbers&quot;, depending on who&#039;s defining that term.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of the above categories overlap each other, of course, so we can&#039;t just add up the whole list to get a total; but just from the size of the numbers we&#039;re getting, we can estimate that there are very roughly 50,000 different serials of interest.&nbsp; That means something on the order of 1 in every 2000 notes would have a moderately collectible serial, or 0.05% of all currency.&nbsp; Feel free to adjust the number up or down depending on what you think &quot;collectible&quot; should mean.</p><p><br /></p><p>Be careful, though; some of the not-so-collectible serials commonly mentioned are massively more common than any of the above.&nbsp; That block of 99,999,999 serials would also contain:</p><p><br /></p><p>90,000 five-digit &quot;low&quot; numbers</p><p>360,000 almost-radars (one digit wrong)</p><p>360,000 almost-repeaters (one digit wrong)</p><p>408,240 five-of-a-kinds</p><p>695,520 trinaries</p><p>900,000 six-digit &quot;low&quot; numbers</p><p>1,814,400 serials with eight different digits</p><p>4,589,550 four-of-a-kinds</p><p><br /></p><p>...so if you&#039;re willing to go far enough, something close to 10% of all serials might be &quot;Ebay special&quot;, shall we say.</p><p><br /></p><p>A difficult type to count are the birthday serials, 08291955 or the like.&nbsp; I don&#039;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.&nbsp; If you figure that only dates in the last 100 years are likely to be of interest to anybody, then that&#039;s 36,500 notes per block--or twice that if you&#039;ll accept the 19550829 format, or vastly more if you&#039;re willing to count weird orders and &quot;almosts&quot; that don&#039;t use all eight digits.</p><p><br /></p><p>(Okay, now who&#039;s going to check my math?)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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