$5 Hb08 Prefix Prices

First things first. The main thing that got me into collecting polymers was the fact that I own a retail business so money comes in one hand & most of it gets banked to pay the bills. Inbetween the money coming in & going to the bank, I order the notes all with windows on the same sides & sift through all those notes. The occasional note is worth holding on to, but most of those notes are just money which will pay the businesses bills.

As a polymer collector, I generally think that earlier polymers pre-1999, before people knew what the first & last prefixes were the way to go, because more notes had been circulated leaving less of the last prefixes in decent condition, therefore pushing up the price of the pristine notes. I'll list a few notes below & the reasons why I think they're worthwhile. Keep in mind that I like $50's, so that tends to be where the majority of my polymer collection lies.
(If I noodle notes, I only noodle $50's so a lot of my opinions may be slightly bias)

PRE 2000 POLYMERS

• $50 JC98 - The scarcest with a print run of only 39,999 notes. In UNC they command an extremely high price. But, very hard to find in condition above EF.


• $20 PE94 - Came as the last print run (out of five print runs, which was over 165 million notes), was probably a less noticed note. A much more circulated note, considering a twenty went through a lot more hands than a $50 (the $50 polymer didn't get released till the following year). Also, command a decent dollar & extremely hard to find in UNC condition. There are many out there, but they're all selling through private hands.


• $5 HB97 - What I believe is probably the most under-rated polymer note. Fivers are the most heavily circulating notes & to have a very small print run of only 135,999 considering the previous years saw over 325 million fivers printed & circulating. People say the Test notes of the same year are a sure bet, where only the first & last test prefixes command a decent dollar considering there's only 9,771 of each of those (first & last) test notes.


• $10 DF96 - A better priced, lower printed note. Only 149,999 printed. Highly circulated, yet everyone is trying to track down the $10 DF97. Maybe the $10 DF97 is more of a mysterious note? Maybe because no-one seems to find prime examples? I'd be going lower print runs of highly circulated notes. The $10 DF97 had 510,499 notes printed which is well over three times the amount of the $10 DF96 note...seems logical, but logic sometimes isn't where the collectors head.

That's where I sit for now, I'll try to get some more of my personal opinions up later...for the more recent issues.

KEL , write them down and carry them in your wallet , that,s what I do , and I check every note I get ,. cheers ,, KEL ,,

i am kelvin from KELVIN GROVE IN BRISBANE but not there anymore

,, kel ,,

There's always stacks of recent first & last prefixes floating around. But the scarcer/less printed are generally sold prior to actually releasing circulation. The stats for the HB's you have come across:
PREF. PRINTED
HB06: 757,499
HB07: 420,000 (actually less printed than the HB08 which has 442,999)
I think the hardest thing with the $5's is that they get so heavily circulated so quickly. It's the note that people use for; a coffee, a cheeseburger meal, their two pieces of sushi, a newspaper & anything else.
As for HB08, the $5 2008 notes haven't yet hit circulation too hard.
I also think that a lot of people purchased huge quantities from the RBA when they we released, being a cheaper note. You could have spent the similar money to get 10 x $5 instead of 1 x $50.

Hi Goatieman,

Seems a bit unusual for the 2008 HB to be significantly more expensive than the 2007 HB if the print numbers are almost the same.

Based on the size of the print runs for the other notes that you mentioned it makes it even more unusual for the 2008 HB to rise in price as it has - not in the same class as the HB 97 but still relatively pricey.

Pedro

$10 - AA 06 360 527 is a First Prefix, the rest are just run of the mill notes.

A Renniks or McDonald's catalogue will tell you first and last prefixes. Searching on ebay to see what sells and for how much is something you could do too.