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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 1476694, member: 11668&quot;]Up until about 1983, they always matched the FRB of the star note to the FRB of the error note it was replacing.&nbsp; That meant that the BEP had to keep 12 separate supplies of star notes on hand for each denomination.&nbsp; And it meant that nearly every series had stars printed for every FRB.&nbsp; (Occasionally, in a short series, one or more FRBs would get through the whole series using leftover stars from the previous series, so that not every FRB would need stars printed.)</p><p><br /></p><p>From about 1983 onward, the FRB of a star note doesn&#039;t have to match the FRB of the note it&#039;s replacing.&nbsp; That way, the BEP doesn&#039;t have to maintain so many separate stocks of star notes.&nbsp; As a result, from Series 1981A onward, each series generally has stars printed for only a few FRBs.&nbsp; Whenever the BEP runs low on stars and needs to print more, they seem to pick the FRB for the new stars based on the FRB of the regular notes that they&#039;re printing at that time; but they keep on using those stars to replace notes of other FRBs too.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the stars being printed in advance--that&#039;s sort of the whole point of stars.&nbsp; In the very old days, before 1910, whenever the BEP caught an error note they&#039;d reprint a new note with exactly the same serial number as the error.&nbsp; Obviously, that was rather time-consuming.&nbsp; So they invented star notes to speed up the process.&nbsp; Before beginning the regular production, they&#039;d print up a batch of stars.&nbsp; Then, whenever they discovererd an error during the regular production, they&#039;d just replace it with a random star note.&nbsp; That saved them the trouble of individually preparing each replacement note to replace some *particular* error note.</p><p><br /></p><p>They do sometimes have some stars left over at the end of a series.&nbsp; If the next series still has the same design, then they just use those leftover stars as replacements in the next series (so it&#039;s perfectly possible to find a strap of 2009 $1&#039;s with leftover 2006 $1 stars in it).&nbsp; But if there&#039;s a design change, then they do have to discard the leftover old stars.&nbsp; Generally, they&#039;re good enough at predicting the error rate that they don&#039;t wind up with very many excess stars that go to waste.</p><p><br /></p><p>And as for where all the information comes from...most of it, I don&#039;t even remember exactly.&nbsp; It&#039;s pretty much common knowledge, if you read the reference books and hobby periodicals and stuff.&nbsp; Some of this information on star notes is probably in the introduction of the small-size book (Schwartz &amp; Lindquist), or the other references like Friedberg, or Hessler &amp; Chambliss; but I don&#039;t remember which of them goes into the most detail on this sort of thing.&nbsp; For the early history of star notes, Murray has a whole book devoted to large-size stars, 1910-1928.&nbsp; Just read everything; that&#039;s what I do....&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie6" alt=":cool:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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