Currency Mysteries: US Dollar and Sterling Pound

The past week we went over some fun facts about the 4^th of july. This week we are going to take a look on some fun facts about United States Dollars and British Pounds.

What does the Star on the serial number means on the US Dollars?

Many times people come to the currency exchange offices wondering about what the star means on their dollars. And we do have the answer: those are replacement notes.

And what is a “replacement note”? You may ask. Replacement notes are those that has to be printed again after there is a printing error occurs during a normal press run and renders a set of bills unusable.The replacement notes have a sequence of their own, using the star as their final "letter." This allows for 99,999,999 possible replacement notes for any given bank, series and denomination and there is about one error in every 100,000 U.S. bills.

But this is not the only time notes are replaced. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing receives around 25,000 mutilated currency redemption claims annually. Each bill is shredded and sent to waste energy facilities for disposal and a check it is sent in return to the bank that sent the damaged note.

And if you wonder... No, the star on the bills does not add any value in the dollar to euro exchange. Some private collector maybe can pay more for those notes, as well as for correlative serial number notes, or notes with printing errors, but oficially they all have their original value.

Some questions about sterling pounds.

There is nothing like a star in the sterling notes, but the british currency has many curiosities and fun historical facts.

Where the sterling pound name comes from? The british pound it´s also called sterling pound because historically the value was the equivalent to a pound of silver, hence why it's sometimes referred to as the "pound sterling.

And why is pound? The name can be trace back to the roman era , and it is translated from the word Libra which means weight or balance. More fully, the words Libra Pondo meant pound weight. I am sure you already assumed this fact, but just in case, this is the main reason why the symbol of the British Pound its an L, the same initial letter from Libra.

Are all the pound the same? There is nothing like the dollar star? In this case we can find some peculiarities on the old one pound coins. There are many countries that use the pound outside the UK. We can find brittish pounds also Falklands Pound, Guernsey Pound ,Gibraltar Pound , Manx Pound, Jersey Sterling Pound and St.-Helena Pound and some of them can be seen on the old 1 pound coin.

And we are back to the important question asked frequently on the money exchange offices: Do they have more value? And the answer, as in the dollar´s case, it is no. The value of those coins are the same as the original british pound when you trying to change pound to euro.

And last but not least: can I change my “star” dollars and my Sterling pounds everywhere? At Eurochange we accept all kind of notes. You can change pound to euro in all of our locations. And not just that, you can also buy dollars using euros but, even we cannot promise a star on our notes, we can guarantee a 5 star service from all our agents at Eurochange.