2017-05-23 Tue

There are occasions when paper money develops problems after a foreign body plays spoilsport. The amount of damage done to the note differs as sometimes it can fully wreck it or partially.

The series 1995 $5 Federal Reserve note was not released nor sold. However, the faulty $5 note was offered at auction by the Heritage in 2006.

A three steps procedure was applied to the series 1995 notes of all denominations. The first on 32-subject sheets and the final step after the sheet was cut into two vertical half sheets of 16 notes each. The back of the sheet was printed first and after that, the drying process came into play which lasted for 24 hours. Following the completion of the drying process, the face side was printed and that too was allowed to dry for 24 hours. The final process began and the sheet was cut into the two half sheets and fed into the overprinting press, which would apply the green serial numbers and Treasury Department seal, and the black Federal Reserve seal and four district numbers.

Somewhere in the middle of the printing of the face and the application of the overprint, a strip of tape intervened and got attached to the half sheet. The strip of tape partially covered the face of the note. The end result proved to be disastrous.

The small FW facility mark on the lower right of the face revealed its printing source details that it was printed at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s plant in Fort Worth, Texas. However, the error could just as easily happen at the BEP facility in Washington, D.C. No matter the note’s origin.