Question About Solid Serial Numbers

No. the BEP likes their employees to be ignorant of how certain notes are more collectable/desirable/valuable than others. Anyone who's a collector is unlikely to be hired by them. There is no legal mechanism by which an employee at the BEP can simply swap out a note in their pocket for a freshly printed note. And anyone found actually stealing a note from the unissued note stockpile would have all of the books thrown at them.


Some countries have their "special" serial numbers separated from the regular print run and sold/auctioned off, but the United States BEP does not.


Yes, they do simply get put into circulation.

And the answer to your next question, "So why haven't I ever found one then", is simple, and it's related to the reason why they are actually quite valuable on the collector market: they're really, really, really rare.

Modern US notes have eight-digit serial numbers. Assuming they printed every number from 00000001 to 99999999, that's a hundred million notes in a sequence. Out of those hundred million notes, only ten of those notes are going to be "solids". So that's literally a one in ten million chance that a note selected at random is going to be a solid. Or to put it in another perspective, that's only slightly better odds than winning the top prize of a standard 6-ball lottery. You'd literally have to search through millions of notes to give yourself a reasonable chance of finding one.

Adding to the difficulty of finding one is, of course, the fact that you aren't the only person looking. I'd even think many non-banknote-collectors, on being given a solid serial number note in change or from the bank (and assuming they actually pay attention enough to notice the serial number), that they'd keep it, or at least look it up on the Internet to see if it was in fact rare or special. Thus, at least some of that tiny percentage of notes that are solids are going to be fished out of the money supply by other people before you even start looking.

(great reply @Sap!)

I got this solid 8 radar in change after buying a Lotto ticket:

(which I posted shortly after joining CCF)

I had been searching tens of thousands of notes but didn't find anything remotely as tough/great.

Now Canadian notes only have 7 digits so its 10X easier to find a solid than a BEP solid radar, but still very tough. The funny thing is, after getting this in my change I slowed down my money recycling activities at the bank (in search of tough prefixes). It actually made me realize just how unlikely it was to find special numbers & tough change-over prefixes.

Your question about BEP "insider staff" pulling special numbers from the production line was correctly addressed by @Sap. I believe its the same scenario in Canada & most countries. I think insiders pulling special serial numbers must be allowed in some Asian countries (like China & the Philippines).

Here's an example I posted years ago:

I bought the above note for about $22 USD (6 digit solid radar) & there were many listed (in fact it would be tougher to find a 2 or 3 digit radar for sale) on ebay at the time.

Thats very nice to know, thank you for that information. Thats exactly what I thought was going on and I'm so glad I was wrong.