They were and are made due to the following reasons: 1) (most common) the normal bills that were suppost to go through got messed up during printing. BEP regulations restrict the Federal Reserve from printing the same serial number more than once, so they just make an entire seperate run of star notes to make up for the mistakes on the previous failed run. 2) from time to time, the government has used star notes to track certain test notess. I can't think of any of these times off of the tip of my hat, but I do know that this has been the case in previous times. That about summarizes it. I hope this information helps out. By the way, Ricky, my name is Travis. Nice to meet you.
They print the stars first, and insert them during production of the regular notes at point after printing. They used to insert them as the regular notes were printed. Now when found in the packs or bricks the whole stack is replaced with stares notes. The old 1929 series notes when found defective were replaced with the exact serial number. These notes were hand stamped and the serial numbers, were sometimes mushy/not clear or off location.
