That sure is one neat note that you have pictured there yechi. Are there more floating around in circulation, a person might ask. You bet there are. My guess would be thousands of them. I imagine also that you could find several such notes on
ebay. Many folks look at serial numbers, but do they look at 'both' serial numbers in relative comparison?
I am not much of a coin collector or currency collector, I am more of a fan of the machines that did it all, especially the 'earlier' coin and currency presses, and here is my condensed (and I really do mean condensed) take on the serial number thing:
The earliest press that churned out US currency was of quite simple design, housed at the American Banknote Company in New York City, contracted by the US Government in 1861, and produced four notes per sheet, one sheet at a time. These notes were then individually inspected, hand signed and hand cut into single notes.
As demand for more notes increased to meet economic growth, the design of presses advanced to compensate for this increasing demand. Throughout the era of large size notes, four notes per sheet was the standard except that most of the earlier $50 & $100 Nationals were printed on sheets of two. Errors were circulated, but they were relatively few.
In 1928 the US decreased the size of the notes to present day dimensions, and increased the number of notes per sheet to 12. In 1952, this increased to 18 notes per sheet.
Up to this point, all notes were serial numbered sequentially (by hand, if you wish) on their respective sheets.
Beginning with the production of the 18 note sheets, a new numbering scheme was implemented; the second note printed would now receive a serial number 8000 higher than the previous note. This pattern continued throughout the sheet so that the 18th note on the sheet would have a serial number that would be 136,000 higher than the first note on the same sheet. (The note that you have pictured above was printed in this sequencing scheme).
Many sheets are printed simultaneously. A complicated stacking process followed (but very basically put), this was done so that as the sheets are stacked, the entire stack of sheets can be cut and the individual notes in each stack will be in numerical order.
Within the next ten years, the notes per sheet had increased to 32, and the numbering scheme also changed again. Now the second note would receive a number 20,000 higher than the prior note, so the last note on the sheet would be numbered 620,000 higher than the first note on that same sheet. In 1971, the BEP installed the COPE machines that were state of the art for that time and could overprint both sides of a sheet simultaneously.
In 1985, these machines began to be replaced by the COPE-PAK machines 120 feet long and nearly 20 feet tall, and are still in use today. Essentially, paper in one end, prepackaged bundles of numerically sequenced cash out the other end.
Today each BEP branch runs nine of these machines, each producing 8,000 sheets per hour, 24 hours per day. The serial numbers are not sequential on individual sheets, and they are not inspected by anyone. The COPE-PAK system is programmed to detect over 700 malfunctions, automatically shut down, and identify the cause of malfunction. I highly doubt that a mismatched serial number would be cause for shut down, and production would continue.
The number sequencing is not set by hand, and this type of mismatched serial number error is far more likely to occur today than it was 100 years ago, although your chances of finding one are probably the same as winning the lottery, due to the sheer number of notes being printed.
Today, serial numbers are computer generated, but are rotated and applied mechanically, and since there are two serial numbers per note, there are two sets of mechanical tumblers 'optimally' acting together. Mistakes can and do happen with mechanical apparati though. It is the job of the error collector to find these mistakes, as neither the BEP or the general public will.
I realize that all of that was far more than you asked for, but I thought that with the number of questions that you had, a little background might be helpful in the overall understanding of how things like this happen.
Posted 12/25/2009 11:57 pm
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