$5 1986 "EOH" PREFIX --- YELLOW B.P.N & BLUE B.P.N

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I've attached a scan of a $5 1986 Crow-Bouey with the YELLOW Back Plate Number (Charlton BC-56a, estimated 2.6 million printed, Cat. $200 in Unc). Condition is original UNC-65 EPQ in my opinion.

I've always wondered why the corresponding EOH note with the BLUE Back Plate Number (Charlton BC-56a-i, estimated 7.4 million printed, Cat. $800 in Unc) is worth FOUR TIMES as much even though three times as many BLUE B.P.N's as YELLOW B.P.N.'s were printed. Moreover, the BLUE variety was issued after the YELLOW variety so one might logically expect it to be the commoner of the two.

Can anyone throw any light on this apparent price anomaly? Am I missing something obvious? Does it mean that the numbers printed do not necessarily reflect the numbers that actually entered circulation?

Many thanks for your valued assistance.

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As far as I know, the yellow bp # notes were issued first.  All the prefix collectors received there "EOH" prefix notes when they firast came out, and were yellow.  When the blue bp #'s were issued, it took some time to realize the change and since the prefix collectors already had their "EOH" notes, not many of the blue's were saved and ended up being circulated.

Tom

Many thanks, Tom. That sounds like a very convincing explanation to me! The same argument would explain why the ENX BLUE B.P.N. is worth a lot more than the corresponding ENX YELLOW B.P.N.

Yes, there are a couple of others, BDH T&C for one, with so few issued, the changeover point was not easily broadcasted as it can be today.  The internet communication is a wonderful thing.  A new changeover can be posted from anywhere in the world and everyone here will know within minutes.  Before the internet thing, collectors relied on the phone or publications.  This could take months before others knew of changeovers.

Tom

The internet communication is a wonderful thing.  A new changeover can be posted from anywhere in the world and everyone here will know within minutes.  Before the internet thing, collectors relied on the phone or publications.  This could take months before others knew of changeovers.Tom

These are profound comments. In the "old" days (before-1990 I guess) it was very difficult to even know about, let alone keep abreast of, all of the changeovers, "31" Replacement Notes, "33" Test Notes, and related things unless you happened to be "in the loop" with the relatively few well-informed specialists at that time. For example, very few collectors knew about the existence of the "33" Test Notes at the time they were issued.

I recall that there was an excellent publication in the pre-1990 days called the Canadian Paper Money PREFIX Newsletter (I used to be a subscriber). This Newsletter kept CPMS members up to date with prefix, replacement and test note happenings but, as mentioned by Tom above, there was always a significant time lag between recent happenings and the reporting of those happenings in the Newsletter.

Wow, I was digging into my SDBox again and I just came across a forgotten EOH9927825 just last week and lo-and-behold it is a blue BPN . It is Unc but with a light what appears to be a 'counting' wrinkle across the first 'A' on the Canada background.  I looked at the issued figures and basically asked myself the very same question. "But there should be three times more Yellows  :-/ than Blues.  Anyway my wife thinks the color of a very tiny number is just amounting to 'nit-picking'. I'm glad someone here is on the same wavelenght. I think this is gonna cover the mortgage this month.

Oops, I forgot to post the note.
1986 $5.00 Crow/Bouey front plate 25 blue / back plate 39 blue EOH9927825

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http://picasaweb.google.com/twoparroteyes/BOCCollectionPt2#4997821725157031954

I acknowledge that Internet is a wonderful way of communication and thanks to it that we can learn very rapidly any "news" about anything.

 But there is a sideback:  if all collectors would know that EOH Blue Plate Number were hanging around at the time when they appeared in circulation, almost everybody would hanged on it and there would be much less rare and the value would be lower and maybe lower that the EOH Yellow.

I mean that's precisely the very fact that very few people had recognized that there was a change on a almost microscopic detail at the time when they would catch some in circulation, which had created the rarity.  And the few notes in UNC grade were the few lucky which had kept one just for their collection by pure luck and realized only later that they had a rarity.  

If everybody know about a rarity, the thing will be much more searched and will be much less rarer.

However, the recent history had told us that even the knowledge is not sufficient, with the so-called "lost prefixes", whereas much more persons had know about, but were unable to get the rarer prefixes. And almost every collector missed at least one or two prefixes... :-/.

Right, I sure missed a lot cool prefixes since 1996 till this year. One of the very rare times I just got lucky finding this one along with a BC56aA-i CB ENX BPN about the same time, I know this one came from an RBC ATM in Burnaby. My policy then was to simply keep it since it was uncirculated and that's generally how I collected back then.

Wow, I was digging into my SDBox again and I just came across a forgotten EOH9927825 just last week and lo-and-behold it is a blue BPN . It is Unc but with a light what appears to be a 'counting' wrinkle across the first 'A' on the Canada background.  I looked at the issued figures and basically asked myself the very same question. "But there should be three times more Yellows  :-/ than Blues.  Anyway my wife thinks the color of a very tiny number is just amounting to 'nit-picking'. I'm glad someone here is on the same wavelenght. I think this is gonna cover the mortgage this month.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by blue bpn or yellow, is it the color spot on the 5$ bill? i'm really curious, I should start digging into my stash of banknotes to see what i overlooked not had not knowledge about.

Glad you asked. 



blue front plate number and blue back plate number.

The back plate or position number prior to this note was yellow in color, this of course was changed to blue since the yellow number was too difficult to identify, practically invisible. Even now I have a yellow back plate note and I still don't know what the number is. As you may know the term 'plate' is a bit of a misnomer left from the days when notes were printed using flat plates.