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Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 02 Apr 2018 14:07
by gaelicyoda
Hey Mac,
I've come across a replacement MMM £5 from 14.09.98 that exceeds the upper serial range in the current edition of Irish Banknotes by about 12k, thought you'd be interested to see it:
98-14-09_MMM_412283.jpg
98-14-09_MMM_412283.jpg (19.41 KiB) Viewed 18820 times
A nice VF condition note.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 31 May 2018 23:00
by ThePloughman
Can't be too often that new replacements turn up for the Irish series.
Was this series completed to MMM 999999? Is it known?

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 01 Jun 2018 16:05
by Mac
@yoda
Nice one, date list updated.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 30 Apr 2020 13:33
by JohnnyQ
I’m not sure if anyone is interested, we used to do a lot of speculating about how the replacements worked but I’ve been looking through the packaging cards that I dug out recently. When I opened a block of new notes, depending on how much time I had I would write down the position of the note in the block and the number of the replacement. Also replacements seem to be inserted at two different times during production. Some notes are exactly the same size and fit perfectly into the block, obviously replaced as a sheet before cutting, and some are a different size and replaced after cutting. This is also borne out by the fact that you could find two different dates of replacements spread through a block. And also there was no star on the packaging if the replacement was inserted pre cutting. I also notice that I didn’t record any MMM replacements. Block PPM 156001 to 157000, which is reasonably late, had two replacements HHH294215 and HHH294220 28.04.94 replacing notes 686 and 687. Both of different size to the block.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 01 May 2020 17:35
by DOC
That is interesting JohnnyQ. Great to hear such details from someone who handled blocks of these notes. Did you ever come across runs of replacement notes in the blocks?

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 02 May 2020 17:30
by Mac
Replacements note dates frequently lagged behind the dates of issued notes in the block in the few blocks that I saw.
On the blocks that had hand-inserted replacements, you could flick through the notes, and the wad would split at the replacement note location as it was a different sized cut, made for speedy extraction!

@DOC, I once came across a cash machine that was giving out replacement tenners one day—I spent two hours relieving it of its notes, a tenner at a time until all my cards were used up! When the queue started to become restless, I moved up to the back of it, and took my turn again! Happy days!

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 03 May 2020 12:22
by DOC
Wow, that is astonishing. It brings to mind The Golden Ticket in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Fortune favours the prepared mind. :)

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 03 May 2020 16:17
by JohnnyQ
You regularly came across runs of replacements in blocks. In the months before the euro they changed the packaging. Moving from 1000 notes numbered from 1 to 1000, card on front and back, bailing strap across the middle and shrink wrapped to ten bundles of 100 notes with a paper wrapper on each bundle and then the whole lot shrink wrapped with no cardboard similar to the euro wrapping. The notes were not necessarily in sequence and didn’t have replacements inserted. They also issued blocks of replacements at that time. Not in sequence, just 1000 of them. I’ve attached the packaging for one of these blocks.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 03 May 2020 16:32
by JohnnyQ
An example of a block with replacements below. Number of the note in the block replaced followed by replacement number.
VMP 085001 to 086000
004 923441
009 923442
010. 923445
011. 923452
012. 923459
366. 923428
503 to 507 923461 to 923465
508 923470
509 to 529 923474 to 923494
530 to 532 923496 to 923497
533 923499

That many replacements was unusual. It was generally between one and five or six. Sorry if this is boring people.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 04 May 2020 18:26
by DOC
Great detail and worth recording for posterity :) This provides an excellent insight into the deployment of replacement notes by the Central Bank of Ireland.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 05 May 2020 11:26
by Mac
JohnnyQ wrote: 03 May 2020 16:17They also issued blocks of replacements at that time. Not in sequence, just 1000 of them.
That's really interesting! As though they were using up all the scraps before the Euro arrived.

Do you have an approximate date when the CCC block was issued?

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 06 May 2020 20:36
by JohnnyQ
It’s possible that they had installed the new machinery to package the euro bank notes and were using this to package the end of the Irish pounds. As they didn’t care about sequences anymore there was no more need for replacements and just issued them in bulk. I’m sure if I got a block of pure replacements then a lot of them were flushed out. The block was in the last half of 2001 as far as I can remember. I remember being very excited at seeing a full block and then realising that there was no way I could keep them and that if they were issued in bulk that it would kill the value of them. I’m surprised at such a high serial number for the MMM at the start of this thread. 400k is a lot of replacements. Especially as HHH were being issued very late on. It could be to do with the fact that there was a large amount of £5 notes produced but never issued according to the 2001 CBI annual report.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 06 May 2020 21:07
by JohnnyQ
Actually it was only 5 million fivers that were left over. Can anyone confirm what £100 prefixes were seen? A and B are all that seem to appear online. According to the 98 annual report there were 4.6m of them printed in 1997. Along with the initial run which was prob 1m as that was what was in circulation means there should have been approx A to F or G.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 07 May 2020 14:44
by Mac
AAK, BAK, FAK have been seen for the £100 notes. Nothing in between, despite an intensive search since 1996!
This correlates with the KKK replacement notes seen: numbers up to around KKK 004000, nothing, then numbers from KKK 010000 onwards.

These two observations suggest that CAK, DAK, EAK, and the replacement notes they contained were not issued.

I have not seen an MMM above the six hundred thousands region, suggesting that the series may not have been completed, or if it was, then the higher numbered notes were not issued. There are also gaps missing the middle of MMM, and MMM notes are scarcer than HHH notes in general.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 11 May 2021 20:35
by billyf1
Would this be the last 999999 Serial £5 to be printed, by any chance?
YMM-999999-c5y1998.jpg
YMM-999999-c5y1998.jpg (32.33 KiB) Viewed 9756 times

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 11 May 2021 20:49
by Mac
Nope!
There was another date, 15.10.99 which had many prefixes.
Interestingly enough, the final note of some of the denominations probably did go into circulation.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 11 May 2021 22:39
by billyf1
Yes, I've seen a lot of different prefixes for the 1999 dates.
I'm intrigued as to how / why they selected the leading, middle and trailing letter on the prefix.
Is it random or date specific?


I've read about it in the book, and I'm still a little unclear on it.

I just need a lightbulb moment, I think :)

As an example, that YMM 999999 leads to what prefix next?

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 12 May 2021 02:40
by ThePloughman
I figure ZMM to be the next prefix after YMM. Then it starts the next run at MNM unless it skips a letter in the middle.

Re: Replacement £5 (14.09.98) Upper serial range

Posted: 17 May 2021 17:34
by Mac
On all of these three letter prefixes, the first letter runs forward A-L, or M-Z on later notes. (Letters O and Q were not used)
The middle letter sometimes runs forward or backwards, and sometimes skips one or more letters.
The third letter is the Base Letter and generally remains fixed until the centre letter has used up all the 12 letters in A-L or M-Z. The base letter is also generally used for replacement notes.