I couldn’t find the article, but I distinctly remember reading when the new $10 note was introduced that the $1 and $5 will remain the same. Which means we’ll have three different currency designs in circulation. What is that? I’ve heard it postulated that they didn’t redesign the $1 note because the Treasury assumed the Sacagawea dollar would take off, because it worked so well with the Susan B! :rolleyes: It seems a bit silly to have such mismatched currency floating around.
Have you ever seen how “mismatched” the paper currencies are in other countries? American bills seem tame by comparison.
You’ve obviously never been to Europe.
They haven’t redesigned the single because it just isn’t worthwhile to counterfeit such a small bill, so the first generation anti-counterfeiting features weren’t considered worth adding.
I guess the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (or whoever makes the decisions) decided that the fives were fine with the first generation anti-counterfeiting features, so they wouldn’t be upgraded with the second generation features like the ten and above.
The Euro has a standard design.
The different colours and sizes mean it’s much easier to tell denominations apart, especially if you are visually impaired.
Sterling could be a little confusing if you go to Northern Ireland or Scotland where several banks print their own branded notes, as opposed to England and Wales where the Bank of England prints a single standard design for each denomination.
No kidding. The first time I went to the UK, I started off in Scotland for a week. At the end of that week, we were going to London. I distinctly remember me and my friends spending all the Bank of Scotland notes we had, because we were convinced that they wouldn’t be spendable in England.
Turns out that they’re all equally spendable, and that we bought a bunch of crap that we didn’t really need to.
:rolleyes:
Actually I just got back on Tuesday from a holiday in Dublin (my seventh time there) and Amsterdam (my first, LOVED IT!). I also noticed that all denominations of the Euro notes follow a uniform design.
The past two redesigns for the Irish punt was done for all denominations.
The Austrialian dollar was redesigned in all denominations, so was the Deutsche Mark.
Notes in the UK can get a bit nutty, but I believe they still have uniform design in all denominations.
Now, I’m not doubting that there aren’t other countries with mismatched currency. Perhaps I didn’t phrase my question clearly enough, but it does seem odd to exclude certain denominations when redesigning your currency. I was curious to know if there was any reason for it other than, “Eh, why bother?”
As stated above, money.
That seems to be the main reason, from what I’ve read. Rather, “eh, why bother spending all those millions of dollars changing something for no real practical reason just for pure aesthetics?”
I remember being in Mexico not so long ago shortly after they’d devalued their currency. To do this, they simply lopped a couple zeros of the end; thus a 500 peso bill became the five peso bill. Problem was, at least for short-term visitors such as myself, the older denominations weren’t taken out of circulation. A further complication was that several of the denominations had been re-issued since the devaluation—in different physical sizes. At more than one time during my visit, I had at least six distinctly different banknotes, all with but two values.
Not nutty at all
As you say, they are uniform in design. The slightly different sizes are to help the visually handicapped.
Before decimalization that may have been the case, but that’s going back over 30 years.
Yes, we would hate to waste tax dollars on something so trivial! 
Yeah, I figured it’s probably something as much. Does any one know how much it costs to redesign a specific note? Would it really add a significant amount to the overall cost to redesign all the denominations?
I can appreciate saving tax dollars, but it seems to me like they’re just being cheap.
I’ve also read that they’ve taken care to slowly alter the design over time, because part of the value of the dollar is it’s visual recognition around the world.
To what degree, if any, would this play a part?
Also, has anyone else heard the Sacagawea theory for the $1?
Now that was nutty!
Sorry, wasn’t knocking your bank notes, I just meant it can be confusing as there are different notes issued by Bank of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
[Eddie&Saff] “Oh it’s all just pounds, shillings and pence to me!” “Probably was last time you had anything to do with it.” [/E&S]
I took a private tour of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving last week, so I think I can speak with a little authority.
As Bildo said, the one- and two-dollar notes are rarely counterfeited, so they are unchanged and have not received the latest overhauls given the higher notes. The five got the larger portrait that is one of the most important anti-counterfeiting measures of the new designs, as well as microprinting and other features. All three are printed using only the intaglio process, in which the paper is pressed against engraved plates with great pressure.
The major revisions to the other notes are not merely different designs, but include many new expensive and time-consuming production processes, so incorporating them into the lower bills would increase the cost of every note. The background colors of the new tens and twenties (and soon the new fifties) are applied with offset presses, a technique not used on older bills. (Both sides are printed simultaneously, which is apparently quite unusual.) The water mark, the security thread inside the paper, and the color-shifting inks are other items that increase the cost.
So leaving the lower notes alone didn’t simply save the cost of a new design, it reduced continuing production costs.
BTW, the cost of the new notes is about 8 cents each, which would be pretty pricey for a one-dollar bill.