2013 matching pair star note search goes international

November 16, 2021 2 min read

2013 matching pair star note search goes international

By Arthur L. Friedberg , Special to Coin World, Published: Nov 15, 2021, 9 AM

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing produced Series 2013 $1 star notes in Washington, D.C., for the New York Federal Reserve District in October and November 2014 with serial numbers going from B00000001* to B00250000* in the first month and next from B03200001* B09600000*.

Not quite two years later, BEP Monthly Production Reports show, a mistake led to these same serial numbers being used again, this time at the Western Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, for another run of Series 2013 $1 star notes.

It is not standard procedure for the same serial numbers to be repeated, even though the FW facility mark printed on Western Facility notes clearly distinguish them from ones printed in Washington. It would be easier to calculate the amount of notes printed if the BEP would use separate serial number sets for the Eastern and Western Facilities, rather than the same set for both facilities as it does now.

Although the printing mistake means millions of numbers are duplicated, the difficulty is in finding a matching pair, which would consist of two of the following numbers: B00000001* to B00250000*, B03200001* to B06400000*, and B06400001* to B09600000*. In other words, even though 6.65 million sets are possible, it is so difficult to put them together that, thus far, reportedly only 11 pairs have been recorded.

This information is from the Zegers/Winograd project, that until September of this year attempted to list all the serial numbers submitted by collectors. The name refers to collectors Ed Zegers of Maryland and Karol Winograd of Florida.

The project has now spread widely on the internet — it was translated into Spanish, and then back into English by Google Translate and then posted on a Canadian website, oicanadian.com.

  The original article can be found at https://www.coinworld.com/news/paper-money/2013-matching-pair-star-note-search-goes-international