SOI Press $20 Notes

In the summer of 2008, the BEP's Washington, DC facility began to print $20 notes on the new Super Orlof Intaglio (SOI) presses. These are the presses that will eventually be processing 50-subject sheets, but at the moment they are still producing 32-subject sheets for compatibility with the existing overprinting equipment. The $20 notes printed on the SOI presses can be distinguished by their oversized face plate numbers, which appear similar to the back plate numbers used on Fort Worth plates.

$20 note printed on old press

$20 note printed on SOI press

The table breaks down the Series 2006 and Series 2009 $20 Washington, DC notes by press type: the older intaglio presses; the new SOI presses; a mixture of the two within a single print run; or a run whose press type is not yet determined. All Fort Worth $20's to date appear to have been printed on older presses. The BEP's monthly production reports do not indicate which serial number ranges were printed on which presses, so the listing below has been compiled from collector observations (special thanks to Karol Winograd for doing most of the compiling). If you have any 2006 or 2009 $20 notes from serial ranges that are still listed as undetermined--or any notes that contradict the listings in the table--please report them to me at webmaster@uspapermoney.info (include the serial number, plate position, and face and back plate numbers). Many thanks for your assistance!

Run 13 of the IG..C block, serials IG 768 00001 C through IG 832 00000 C, comprised 140,000 sheets from the SOI presses and 60,000 sheets from the older presses. The SOI press notes are the lowest 140,000 of each 200,000 serials within the run.

Run 7 of the IL..D block has been identified as a mixed run as well. This run covers serials IL 384 00001 D through IL 448 00000 D. Here, known SOI notes have sheet numbers above 156,000, while known old-press notes have sheet numbers below 140,000. It seems likely that the cutoff falls at sheet 140,000.

Similarly, run 8 of the IL..D block, serials IL 448 00001 D through IL 512 00000 D, included sheets from both types of presses. So far, known SOI press notes have sheet numbers above 101,000, while known old-press notes have sheet numbers below 96,000. Most likely the cutoff is at 100,000.

Run 13 of the IL..D block, serials IL 768 00001 D through IL 832 00000 D, is another mixed run. Known SOI notes have sheet numbers up to 182,895, while known old-press notes have sheet numbers 183,471 and higher; so the cutoff here is definitely not an even multiple of 20,000 sheets.

An even more unusual mixed run is IF..E run 5, serials IF 256 00001 E through IF 320 00000 E. All known notes with sheet numbers 2742 and higher are SOI, but one old-press note has recently been confirmed with sheet number 857. Old-press notes from this run are apparently rather scarce, and more reports would certainly be welcome.

Similar is IJ..B run 1, serials IJ 000 00001 B through IJ 064 00000 B. Here, one old-press note has been found with a sheet number of 302, while SOI notes are known with sheet numbers as low as 3707.

Likewise, IL..E run 4, serials IL 192 00001 E through IL 256 00000 E, has an old-press note from sheet 156, though SOI notes are known from sheets as low as 1731.

And IL..E run 5, serials IL 256 00001 E through IL 320 00000 E, has an old-press note from sheet 3, though SOI notes are known from sheets as low as 6527.

In IA..C run 7, serials IA 384 00001 C through IA 448 00000 C, an old-press note is known from sheet 237, while SOI notes are known from sheets as low as 6800.

In the most extreme case to date, IG..* run 1, a short run of 20,000 sheets covering serials IG 000 00001 * through IG 006 40000 *, has an old-press note known from sheet 5, though SOI notes are known from sheets as low as 95! It would appear that no more than a few thousand old-press notes could exist in this run.

If the BEP frequently used such tiny batches of old-press sheets at one end of SOI runs, there could potentially be more of these rare old-press notes out there to be discovered in many other SOI runs. However, in the table above, any run currently represented by only one type has been assumed to consist entirely of that type, even if the number of notes reported is quite small (one, in several cases). New observations will continue to refine the data.