Be Careful! Someone Has Gotten Crafty.

And your point is? Wood pulp was never mentioned by the OP that I can see. And a cotton or cotton/linen blend of fibers is used in many grades of paper - not just currency, and these are considered a grade of paper. And cotton/linen does age. Cotton and wood pulp are both cellulose based and can yellow with age and chemical and light exposure. I'm relying here on 30+ years of paper industry experience, as well as customer service work for Crane Paper (former suppliers of all US currency paper).

hey OP if paper money ages and it never is crisp and white how come there are so many graded 67-69 paper money from 1881 series that are crisp well over 60 years old and are beautifully white?

ckrakowski - They must have been preserved or never used. That is pretty much the only way that this would happen. They start pulling old currency out of circulation when it gets to a bank, only for security reasons. Anyway, if something has a different design then normal, then you would look at the date and if it's old you would probably look it up to see if it's valuable. Just common sense.

When someone says "paper", the average person thinks of a wood pulp-based product. There is a very sizable portion of the population, even those that collect coins, that mistakenly believes that currency is just printed on the equivalent of fancy copy paper. If you worked for Crane then you should know that 100+ year old uncirculated currency can indeed be virtually as white as the day it was printed.

Whether currency paper (and cotton(rag)/linen blends ARE considered a grade of paper!) remains white depends on how it is stored. Stored correctly and not exposed to light or chemical fumes, I totally agree it will remain white. But, so will many other paper grades. Note - currency paper and other paper grades are not woven like cloth. It's a mesh of interlocking fibers, rather than a weave. Even though it's not woven, the cotton/linen mixture has a strong bonding of the fibers with each other, to the extent that our currency can be inadvertently run though a washing machine without having the notes disintegrate. Most wood fiber papers will encounter much more damage if washed.

The cotton blends (or wood pulp fibers), after processing into single fibers of a determined length, are dispersed with a lot of water in a "headbox", and this diluted slurry is then evenly spread across a continuously moving wire "belt" loop that is several feet across, the water is removed as the wet slurry proceeds across this wire mesh, and this wet sheet then run through a lengthy section of presses and cylindrical dryers, and the dried paper rolled up into large reels. Then the paper is sent off for whatever the end use will be. The same process is used for currency paper or any other fine paper grade.It's a lot more complex than I can explain here, but here's a good video of the process. NOTE: the video shows the process with wood, not cotton, as the fiber source, but the paper machine processing is still the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4C3X26dxbM


biokemist - From my experience with Crane, they could care less about the aging process after they ship the paper to the printers. The cotton blend is one that has been used for many many years, due to the known durability of the cotton cellulose fiber being far superior to a cellulose wood fiber. So Crane wasn't really concerned about the aging process, since the tried and proven fiber blend, and meeting other paper specifications, were their big concern. I've never seen the Crane paper machines in action - as you can guess, only employees with security clearance are allowed into the mill. Most tech service work had to be done off-site and submitted.

Sorry for being so lengthy, and I'm not wanting to sound argumentive. I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions out there about what paper is, and specifically the differences between currency paper vs. typical wood pulp paper. I think this is good information for currency collectors to know.

Sorry - still! I was thinking of when Appleton Papers made an attempt at some of the business & lost. So yes - Crane remains the only supplier!

Good catch jbuck!

Hah! They'd still be printing them, even if Appleton Papers had gotten some or all of the business. Or the govt. would save money by using a copier LOL!

Oh, okay. You were just clarifying for those who may not know. It makes sense now.