Format for star note serials

February 1984 through August 1995

In some of the older series, so many partial runs of star notes were produced, with many gaps in their serial number ranges, that I have adopted an abbreviated format for their listings.

The most important fact to remember is that, no matter whether a full run or a partial run of star notes was printed, a full standard run worth of serial numbers was always set aside for it. Thus, whenever a partial run was produced, some serial numbers were skipped over entirely. These "missing" numbers were not used in the next run; they were simply omitted from the series.

Therefore, since a standard print run of stars is 100,000 sheets, each run of star notes was allowed a range of 3,200,000 serial numbers (since there are 32 notes to the printed sheet). And each such range always began and ended at multiples of 3,200,000, regardless of how many notes had been printed in previous runs. The following table gives the resulting ranges of serial numbers which correspond to each run number:

Run	Serial Numbers
1	00000001 - 03200000
2	03200001 - 06400000
3	06400001 - 09600000
4	09600001 - 12800000
5	12800001 - 16000000
6	16000001 - 19200000
7	19200001 - 22400000
8	22400001 - 25600000
9	25600001 - 28800000

The numbering can continue in this way through as many as 31 runs before running out of serial numbers, but no more than nine 100,000-sheet runs of star notes were needed for any district, denomination, and series listed in the data on these pages.

In the monthly production tables, I have listed each run of star notes by its district and its run number. Thus, for example, a listing of "F#4" indicates printing of notes with serial numbers F 096 00001 * through F 128 00000 *.

As mentioned above, partial runs of star notes were often printed, and in this case certain serial numbers were skipped. In such cases, the numbering equipment would be set up just as for a standard 100,000-sheet run of star notes, but numbering would be stopped before all 100,000 sheets had been printed. Because of the way the numbers are arranged on the sheets within a run, this process resulted in many small gaps in the serial numbers used on these partial runs. In particular, each group of 100,000 serial numbers within the run would be missing an amount of numbers equal to the amount of sheets omitted from the run; and the numbers actually used would be the upper range of each group of 100,000. (The example below should make this clearer.)

Partial runs of this type have been indicated in the monthly tables by noting the number of sheets actually printed, such as "[20000]". Thus, for example, a listing of "F#4[20000]" indicates that the following notes were (and were not) printed:

Position	Serials NOT Printed	Serials Printed
A1	F 096 00001 * - F 096 80000 *	F 096 80001 * - F 097 00000 *
B1	F 097 00001 * - F 097 80000 *	F 097 80001 * - F 098 00000 *
C1	F 098 00001 * - F 098 80000 *	F 098 80001 * - F 099 00000 *
D1	F 099 00001 * - F 099 80000 *	F 099 80001 * - F 100 00000 *
E1	F 100 00001 * - F 100 80000 *	F 100 80001 * - F 101 00000 *
F1	F 101 00001 * - F 101 80000 *	F 101 80001 * - F 102 00000 *
G1	F 102 00001 * - F 102 80000 *	F 102 80001 * - F 103 00000 *
H1	F 103 00001 * - F 103 80000 *	F 103 80001 * - F 104 00000 *
A2	F 104 00001 * - F 104 80000 *	F 104 80001 * - F 105 00000 *
B2	F 105 00001 * - F 105 80000 *	F 105 80001 * - F 106 00000 *
C2	F 106 00001 * - F 106 80000 *	F 106 80001 * - F 107 00000 *
D2	F 107 00001 * - F 107 80000 *	F 107 80001 * - F 108 00000 *
E2	F 108 00001 * - F 108 80000 *	F 108 80001 * - F 109 00000 *
F2	F 109 00001 * - F 109 80000 *	F 109 80001 * - F 110 00000 *
G2	F 110 00001 * - F 110 80000 *	F 110 80001 * - F 111 00000 *
H2	F 111 00001 * - F 111 80000 *	F 111 80001 * - F 112 00000 *
A3	F 112 00001 * - F 112 80000 *	F 112 80001 * - F 113 00000 *
B3	F 113 00001 * - F 113 80000 *	F 113 80001 * - F 114 00000 *
C3	F 114 00001 * - F 114 80000 *	F 114 80001 * - F 115 00000 *
D3	F 115 00001 * - F 115 80000 *	F 115 80001 * - F 116 00000 *
E3	F 116 00001 * - F 116 80000 *	F 116 80001 * - F 117 00000 *
F3	F 117 00001 * - F 117 80000 *	F 117 80001 * - F 118 00000 *
G3	F 118 00001 * - F 118 80000 *	F 118 80001 * - F 119 00000 *
H3	F 119 00001 * - F 119 80000 *	F 119 80001 * - F 120 00000 *
A4	F 120 00001 * - F 120 80000 *	F 120 80001 * - F 121 00000 *
B4	F 121 00001 * - F 121 80000 *	F 121 80001 * - F 122 00000 *
C4	F 122 00001 * - F 122 80000 *	F 122 80001 * - F 123 00000 *
D4	F 123 00001 * - F 123 80000 *	F 123 80001 * - F 124 00000 *
E4	F 124 00001 * - F 124 80000 *	F 124 80001 * - F 125 00000 *
F4	F 125 00001 * - F 125 80000 *	F 125 80001 * - F 126 00000 *
G4	F 126 00001 * - F 126 80000 *	F 126 80001 * - F 127 00000 *
H4	F 127 00001 * - F 127 80000 *	F 127 80001 * - F 128 00000 *

Note that, within each position, the last 20,000 serial numbers are the ones used, because the numbering machines count downward within each run. If the partial run had been 10,000 sheets, the serial numbers used for position A1 would have been F 096 90001 * through F 097 00000 *, and likewise for the other positions. Similarly, if the partial run had been 50,000 sheets, position A1 would have used serials F 096 50001 * through F 097 00000 *. In general, a run of N sheets will always use the last N of each 100,000 serial numbers in the run's assigned range.