What is this "letter" next to the 1 on the 1899 $1 Silver Certificate?
sharkyrex
Posts: 23 ✭
Buying all low end varieties of the $1 bill.
1
sharkyrex
Posts: 23 ✭
Comments
No idea !!!
Top note: old English B
2nd Note: old English D
3rd note: old English C
4th note: old English D
Or if you like, a below average student's report card in the old days!
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6000 posts and you have no idea it's the plate position.
What is the plate position?
Buying all low end varieties of the $1 bill.
Sorry, I do mostly coins. My apologies for not being as intelligent as you !!!
In the pre-Federal currency days, all of the notes on a particular printed sheet carried the same serial number. In order to distinguish the individual notes the position of each note on the sheet included a unique position letter; the top note would be A, second would be B, etc. So for the first sheet with 4 notes of the same denomination, the letters would be A-1, B-1, C-1 and D-1. When the plate wore out it would be replaced with a new plate containing E-F-G-H. This numbering scheme was continued on nationals (until the 1929 type IIs) which have both a bank sheet number and a treasury serial number as well as the check letters. Other federal currency was sequentially numbered, but the identifiers for the specific plate position has been retained.
If you look at the black eagles you'll see that the fancy letter is repeated in the lower right as the start of the identifier for the specific printing plate, I just looked at a big head $20 and it had a plate letter in the lower left corner and a plate letter with a specific plate number in the upper right.
Nevermind