What Denomination or theme should a novice person start with on Paper Money collecting I have guide book-United States Paper Money 4TH edition by Friedberg
One dollar, Two Dollar and Five Dollar small size 1928-1963 series set. The reason I say the domination is because of their unique seal colors. For example, you could do 1928-1928e two dollar notes, then 1953-1953b two dollar notes. Try to get the highest grade you can afford if possible.
First and foremost: collect what you find appealing as it is YOUR collection. The smaller denoms are much more afforadble in circulated grades I wouldn't pay much over $1-2 over face for them as they are readily available Red & blue notes $1,$2,$5"s seem to be very popular. There's so many different ways to collect em. You could go with districts (12) Take for example $1 silvers 1957,1957 A, 1957 B (36 notes) more if you add the star notes. Or you could go crazy and collect all districts and letters (A XXXXXXXX A) to (A XXXXXXXX Z) per district & series (79 notes x 12 districts=948 notes x 3 series 57,57a,57b=2,844 notes). If my math is correct that would be 53 notes just within the A XXXXXXXX A to A XXXXXXXX Z and only one district, add the stars for another 26 notes. Add that all up and you have a life long inexpensive plight. I've seen an almost complete set like that (quite awesome to say the least). edit: to add I use the standard Catalog of United States Paper Money 26th edition by Krause publications (full color)
The various $1 circulation-strike coins of the last 40 years; they are not destined to be with us much longer, in my opinion.
Wait, what? Silver certificates don't have "districts"; only Federal Reserve issues have those. If you want to collect all the different serial number blocks, Series 1957 has 27 regular and 4 star; Series 1957A has 16 regular and 1 star; and Series 1957B has 9 regular and 2 star. That's 59 total, which is much more manageable for a collection than 2,844!
My bad on the districts and I apologize for any mis information. I was under the impression that the second letter also went to Z. Then again maybe it was the $5 FRN's or maybe it was all the letter blocks from 1928-1957B it was long ago and sometimes my memory gets confused with what I thought I saw.
You could create a star note type set if you have more money to spend. For example, on a two dollar bill you could find every series with a star, except trying to go all the way to series 2013. I just collect from circulation so I do not have a big set.
The second letter presumably *would* have gone to Z if they'd ever needed that many serial numbers, but they didn't come anywhere close. Even the 1935-1935H printings, spanning nearly thirty years, only got up to block E..J (that's nine full cycles through the prefix alphabet, plus a bit of the tenth). Off the top of my head, I think the only serials *ending* with a Z were some large-size notes, back when they used up all the matching-letter blocks (A..A, B..B, and so on) first before going on to other combinations. I know there are Z..Z notes in the 1899 $1 silver certificates (the Black Eagle series), and I think it happened in a few series of large-size Nationals as well.
Well, a lot depends on how much you want to spend. If you only look for modern green-seal $2 star notes, it wouldn't be too hard to get one from every series. Even if you wanted to get every series and district, the toughest notes would cost under $100 in nice circulated grades, or a couple of hundred in CU. On the other hand, if you go back and include the red-seal $2 star notes, there are a couple of *very* rare series there. Getting all the $1 silvers back to 1928 would also involve a few pricey notes. The 1928E is probably the toughest, and would cost several hundred dollars even in well-worn condition. On the plus side, this would be an interesting set of different designs showing how the $1 note changed over the years. The 1957 series block set has 59 notes, but most of them are inexpensive even in CU, and even the tough ones won't cost as much as the stoppers in the other sets. If you're the sort of collector who prefers to stick to uncirculated notes, this set would be more manageable than the others.
