Other than the fairly small run, what is it about this note that makes it so valuable? The run of 1977-A I* $1 FRNs (FR# 1901I) was only 385K and yet that note is valued in the current issues of THE OFFICIAL RED BOOK A GUIDE BOOK OF UNITED STATES PAPER MONEY @ $8, the STANDARD CATALOG OF UNITED STATES PAPER MONEY @ $35 and PAPER MONEY OF THE UNITED STATES @ $25 I find this quite perplexing, am I missing something?
I'm not sure about this. You start out asking about a 1977-A Star note but then show a pic of a 1981-A Star note with 640,000 run size Now I find this quite perplexing, am I missing something?
The Fr.1912-K* (1981A Dallas Star) is a very tough note to find in GEM. I have an example (66EPQ) and paid around $900 back in 2008-2009. Not many survivors, and like everything else in numismatics, it's driven by supply and demand. Way back in this time period, the run sizes didn't mean as much as they do now. There were lower runs back then, but that didn't always equate to being rare or scarce. My note;
Steve just wondering (I'm sure you have heard this question before) - I looked up the serial# and it stated - Total printed 640,000. But this ones serial # is (00) 699,148. How is that? Total Printed 640,000
As per Robert Azpiazu's collectors guide; "The 1981A $1 Dallas Star is the second rarest star block printed for $1 Federal Reserve Notes. With a serial number range from 00000001* to 03200000* it was first thought that 3,200,000 notes were printed. This is not true, only 640,000 notes were printed. They are printed in the GAP star format which skips numbers in printing." Forum member @Numbers could explain this phenomenon in detail.....maybe he will read this thread and chime in. BTW, a 1977A $1 Minneapolis star note is Fr.1910-I*, and not Fr.1901-I*.....maybe just a typo on your end.
I don't know much specifically about currency, but I do know prices in guides like the Red Book tend to be somewhat high. You're better off looking at completed auctions or online guides most of the time.
Price guides are just that, guides. To get a true idea I use current completed auctions. When I first started collecting small sized US paper currency, I bought a Red Book. I used it for about about a month and haven't looked at it since. The Red Book lacks run size detail. After that I started using the Standard Guide to Small Size US Paper Money 1928 to Date authored by John Schwartz/Scott Lindquist. I started with the 8th edition, and now use the 10th edition .....and the 10th edition is 4 years old now. Use them only as guides, always check current completed auctions.
Yeah, it's the way they used to number the partial star runs, before about 1995. If a full run of star notes is 100,000 sheets, but they only want to print 20,000 sheets, then they set up the run just like it was going to be a 100,000-sheet run, but they stop after printing 20,000 sheets. This results in gaps in the serial ranges of the run: they only use the highest 20,000 of each 100,000 serials within the run. So in the 1981A $1 K..* run, they ended up printing: K00080001* - K00100000* K00180001* - K00200000* K00280001* - K00300000* K00380001* - K00400000* K00480001* - K00500000* ...and so on, through... K03180001* - K03200000*. Basically, the last five digits of the serial are always in the range 80001-00000, never 80000 or lower. After 1995, they don't generally do this sort of thing, which makes it a good bit less confusing to keep track of the serial ranges.
