Question to the numismatics here.
@Aris
@EPonMantel can you please ping any others here whom you know to be bill collectors.
First time I was able to get a brand new BEP $1000 stack of $1 bills at the bank from their vault to look through.
In my case, I had a pretty lame first five digits to work with in all ten stacks, but at least I'd have a three digit repeater serial number in each 100 (last three digits the same as the first three).
Not so much.
Odd findings:
1) While each stack was fully sequential, they started at random numbers for the last three digits like "885" rather than at "001" as one would expect.
2) Five of the stacks were missing precisely the bookend bills. No more, no less (though two were missing the adjacent one).
3) Each stack counted out at $100 (not odd: it should) but was otherwise sequential from start and, notably, through to the last note in the stack (no odd serial slipped in there somewhere)
The 10-stack was plastic wrapped, barcode sealed, and all ten stacks had BEP straps. My understanding is (and the bank manager confirmed) this is a wholly un-circulated brick straight from the BEP.
And yet... it's missing serials. Not just random ones that might have been pulled for an error, but very specifically the only collectible one in each stack. Each stack counted out at $100, each was otherwise fully sequential and just gained a digit (or two) at the end, which proves the bills were undeniably pulled at BEP prior to being strapped. (How else to get the last one or two to be sequential and still add up to 100?)
Is this BEP in-house pilfering of collectibles a known reality in bill collecting?
Is there a policy at BEP that allows this?
A bit disheartening as a collector to know that some bills we look for never even make it out the BEP door.
