Poll of the Day > I have found a duplicate dollar bill.

(+) Yeah! (+)

2013 Rios|Lew $1 FRN with the serial number B02416510* printed at the Fort Worth facility.

This one, to be exact

http://www.mycurrencycollection.com/reference/star-notes/lookup/1/2013/B02416510*

So, as we can see, this is a star note. But, it isn't rare at 3.2 million. I have literally hundreds of these in my collection.

What gives?

Well, for the 2013 B(New York Bank) they printed some star notes at both their Washington, D.C. facility and the their Fort Worth facility. Somehow, they messed up and printed some serial numbers at both places, creating two identical notes.

The way serial numbers work within a series(ex: 2001, 2003, 2003a, 2006, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2017A) is that the first letter is the bank designation, in this case "B" for New York. There are then eight digits ranging from 00000001 to 99999999(roughly), and then either the suffix or a star. The suffix starts at "A" and when 99 million notes are printed it switches to "B" and then on and on all the way to "X". If it has a star instead of a letter, it is a star replacement note of one originally damaged in production. It can have the same serial number as another note, but it will be differentiated because it has no letter, but there are no duplicates of these numbers with a *, ever. So there can be a B02426510 A, B, C, etc and a *, but never two B02426510 *s out there. Such as no two will have A or B at the end either.

But, some have gotten out. On every dollar bill there are 4 of the same digits in a rectangle pattern, in this case 2 for New York. Next to each set is a small FW or another letter, indicating where it was printed at. FW is fort worth and anything else is DC. That will be the main difference on these notes outside of printing plate number and position. I don't know how but there are exact duplicates of some of these 2013 series star notes. I believe this was a more recent discovery in American numismatics. I have around 240 2013 $1 star notes in my collection, many of which come from New York. The ones from DC are from a 250,000 print run, and the ones from Fort Worth are from a 3.2 million print run, so 250,000 will match up.

The interesting thing is, of course, having one note is worth one dollar but if you found its duplicate? thousands.

Well folks, im checking my stack here. I doubt I have any matches but if I do....

ya'll know i'm gonna love it.