2001 Journey $10 (Tough Prefixes: Show Yours)

I started a thread on Variations in the World currency forum, & @NumisRob's recent post (Series E £5 & £10 notes) http://goccf.com/t/409230#3592196 reminded me of the many tough prefixes that can be collected from the 2001 Journey Series. It (& a garage sale) are what got me back into collecting. At the time, around 2003, I had no idea that the 2001 Tens (P-102a-e), were literally a collector's dream series. Why? Because the notes were being rampantly counterfeited & the BoC (along with their printers) were scrambling to add a security thread to sort out the problem. Many people noticed that the substrate (paper pulp) wore down easily & ink-jet printers doomed its longevity from the get-go. What made the series interesting to collect, however, wasn't its failures. For the first time, the series had the year of printing imprinted on the bottom reverse border & it rolled out with many change-overs, short prefixes & replacements. I won't be covering the replacements (unless they happened to have been integral to their roll out/manner in which they were issued).

So let's begin. The front of the note featured John A. MacDonald in a close up like we've never seen before. The only security feature was the gold maple leaves, the microprinting & florescent features. Peace Keeping & Remembrance are themes featured on the back. So, with little visible security features (other than the gold tinted leaves), most retailers couldn't simply eyeball the note & distinguish a legit from a fake (easily):


The first short prefix was the Knight-Thiessen FDY prefix & even though 2.4M were issued, these caught most collectors off guard so that high grade examples were tough to find:


The next note that caught collector's attention was the 2000 Knight-Thiessen FDZ replacement (600,000) & its FDZ Knight-Dodge change-over(400,000). A good many of these were caught so they were not quite as scarce in high grades as the FDY. (I bought the Knight-Dodge FDZ off a collector friend). Here's the tougher replacement:


Next up was the 2001 Knight-Dodge FEE year change-over which only had a tiny 480,000 print run. Below it is a close up of the year printed imprint:



The next tough change-over was the 2003 Jenkins-Dodge BEK. By the time this note came out, plans for the security strip (2005 Journey) were well under way, so it is believed that not all of the 1.4M notes were released. Both the replacement & the regular note were very tough to acquire:


The next change-over was the 2003 & 2004 BER. By this time, I was in the hunt & searching like a madman for either a 2003 & 2004. I will never forget finding an AU+ 2004 but it had "Where's Willy" stamped on it & I threw it back into the wild in disgust. I regretted that since I never found another one. But what became even more surprising, was that nobody was finding any 2003 BER! So that became the big buzz (& search):



By 2004, the $20 arrived with the security strip & we knew it wouldn't be long before the 2005 revised $10 would follow. So what happened to the 2003 BEL & BEP? A few BEP were found out west but the BEL remained scarce & elusive right up till the last short 2004BET prefix (920,000).

Here's a BEP I bought from a collector from Edmonton:


and here's a worn out BEL I traded with another collector:


I traded a pretty old/scarce note for this VG-F example only because it was a number we had not seen/recorded on the serial number data base (as we were tracking the number ranges). It is very scarce & I will be selling it soon (along with some other rare Journey notes).

Please share some of your Original 2001 Journey $10 or $5 (I will post more on the FIVES tomorrow).

So please stay tuned!