Posted 02/19/2015 06:37 am
I've first heard that rumor back in December 2013, actually (when originally trying to buy one of these notes for Secret Santa).
I've never heard of replacement notes having any specific distinguishing feature in Russia, and for that matter I'm not really sure how do Russian note prefixes work in the first place (they seem pretty random).
I suspect that at best they're about as much "replacement" as the 2014-dated 25-ruble Sochi coins (with the non-2014 designs); perhaps the demand for them was so high that more were produced in such a way.
They're definitely not rarer than the other two prefixes (though, at least for a while initially, they were more expensive - perhaps due to that very rumor).
I've never heard of replacement notes having any specific distinguishing feature in Russia, and for that matter I'm not really sure how do Russian note prefixes work in the first place (they seem pretty random).
I suspect that at best they're about as much "replacement" as the 2014-dated 25-ruble Sochi coins (with the non-2014 designs); perhaps the demand for them was so high that more were produced in such a way.
They're definitely not rarer than the other two prefixes (though, at least for a while initially, they were more expensive - perhaps due to that very rumor).
