A trip to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing

On Thursday, we visited the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, just north of Fort Worth. I had visited a few years ago when Danica visited us, but found it very interesting again! I learn so much about our money each time I visit.

This facility prints the "paper" notes. It is one of two locations in the U.S., the other being in Washington, DC. It is the only location where $2 notes are printed. In the past, it also printed stamps, but it no longer does that.

One of the first things I read in one of the displays was that the paper is printed first with green ink on one side, and then allowed to dry for 3 days before printing in black on the other side. I was initially thinking, "What? it isn't green ink on both sides?" but then I remembered that the bills are sometimes called "greenbacks" - thus they are only printed with green ink on the back. Did you already know that?

You cannot take any electronic or recording devices into the site, so we could not take any pictures inside the building....

So we got one at the entrance sign...

The remainder of the pictures are from the information sheet that we were given on the tour... you might want to grab a couple of bills from your wallet to check the information with your own examples!

Answers are on the last picture in this post...

No $2 notes ordered to be printed this fiscal year...

One of the things we learned was that, if there is a problem during the last of the printing steps - the one that prints the Federal Reserve Seal and Serial Number, if there is some sort of problem with one of the sheets such that it must be discarded, a replacement sheet with a "star" at the end of the Serial Numbers will be inserted, so the Federal Reserve bank knows why the bank notes are not in sequential Serial Number order. 1-2% of the bills have this star, making those notes slightly more valuable to collectors - based on the millions of notes printed, even 1-2% is a lot of notes. But! a star serial number on a $2 bill (since they are not printed every year and a much smaller quantity are printed) can be more valuable to collectors.

The guy who was telling us this showed us a $2 star note with a series 1953 (his birth year) that he said his wife had purchased for, I think, $49! (Note: the series number is not the year of the printing - I am not sure how the series number is set.)
I just looked on ebay - what you will see if you follow this link will probably be different than what I saw when I looked at it, but it should show some star banknotes for sale: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR1.TRC0.A0.H0.Xstar+banknote.TRS0&_nkw=star+banknote&_sacat=0
The guy who talked to us implied that $1 star notes would only bring about $1.10 from a collector - I'm seeing significantly higher prices when I look at that search, but... that isn't reflecting what people would be willing to pay, only what folks want to sell them for!
More information about star notes can be found here: https://www.bep.gov/hmimcope.html

If you are ever in the DFW area, we recommend a visit to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing!