The Mystery of One Dollar Bills with Duplicate Serial Numbers

Some people might think it's impossible to have two dollar bills with the same serial number, but that's not the case. In fact, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) can produce multiple notes with the same serial number.

Duplicate serial numbers are more common than you might think. According to the Federal Reserve, more than 1.5 billion dollar bills are printed every year, making it statistically likely that some serial numbers will be repeated.

Stack's Bowers auction featured a rare PMG-Certified 1896 $1 Educational Series bill with a unique characteristic - it's one of only two known examples of a dollar bill with a duplicate serial number.

These bills were printed in 1896 as part of the Educational Series, with a total of 65,000 printed.

The PMG-Certified 1896 $1 Educational Series bill sold for $1,320 in the auction.

The 1896 $1 Educational Series bills were printed on paper that was not as durable as modern paper, leading to a higher likelihood of damage and wear.

One of the known duplicate serial number bills is in the PMG-Certified grade of 65 EPQ.

Finding a one dollar bill with a duplicate serial number is not particularly hard, especially if you search lots of circulated money, with 1 out of every 1,000 dollar bills in circulation being from the same serial number range.

There are approximately 13.3 million one dollar bills in circulation with these duplicate serial numbers. This number is roughly 1% of the total number of dollar bills in circulation.

If you have a collection of 100 one dollar bills, the odds of finding at least one match by searching eBay listings are extremely low, at 0.003% per day. This is because there are only 5 new qualifying star notes listed on eBay each day to check against.

However, if you search for a year, the odds of finding at least one match increase to 1.36%. This is because the total number of new notes to check against per year is 1825, or 5 new listings per day multiplied by 365 days.

To put this into perspective, if you have 100 one dollar bills in your collection, you'd need to search through 1825 new listings per year to find at least one match.

These errors highlight the need for stringent checks to prevent future errors.

The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing's oversight and quality control mechanisms have come under scrutiny due to the incident of serial number duplication.

Typically, such errors could potentially impact the trust in the reliability and uniqueness of U.S. currency.

The rarity of these errors and the prompt recognition by the collecting community often serve to reassure the public about the general reliability of the currency production process.

However, these occurrences do highlight the need for improvement in the oversight and quality control mechanisms.