1954 Solid Radar with Extra Wide Margins

News: Welcome to the Canadian Paper Money Forum.

I have a 1954 $2 Solid 5s note (P/G 5555555) that has incredibly wide margins when compared to other $2 notes from this same prefix.

I am under the suspicion that this note may have been cut by hand, possibly for presentation purposes.  I have no other explanation for such an oversized note.

Any comments would be welcome.

Margin width aside, are the note's physical dimensions larger than what is standard?

Margin width aside, are the note's physical dimensions larger than what is standard?

The oversized note measures 156mm in length and 73mm in width (right side).

Another BABN Lawson-Bouey note with good margins measures 152mm in length and 70mm in width.

To me that is a sizable difference in physical dimensions.

This subject of note size comes up again and again as the years pass, and nothing is ever resolved.  People who believe that older series notes are supposed to have one size and one size only will continue to believe this after the discussion dies down once again.

If you handle enough 1954 and multicolour series notes, you will realize that they were not produced uniformly.  You will see notes with big margins on one side, small margins on the opposite side.  You will see notes with sloping margins due to the original sheet being rotated slightly out of alignment with the cutting blades.  You will see notes with a combination of poor centering and edges that are not orthogonal.  All these notes with imperfect features could not have been cut by hand.

Oversize notes happen.  They likely come from the edges of sheets rather than the middle.

I seem to recall reading a post a few years ago written by a certain editor of a certain paper money catalogue on the subject of note size, and it mentioned that sheets were not always uniformly dried prior to cutting.  Cotton fibre paper tends to swell when wet and shrink when dried such that differences in the size of the printed area of a note can vary considerably.  So any discussion of note size needs to take into consideration measurements of printed area in addition to measurements of total size.  A note with large white borders may have a smaller printed area than most other notes.

I doubt there will ever be a definitive study done on note sizes because it requires a great degree of expertise, including the ability to recognize altered notes.  Trimmed notes would obviously pose a problem to data sets, but also, cleaned/pressed notes will also have their dimensions altered.  Notes that have been cleaned and/or pressed tend to be stretched larger than their original size.  To do a study, a person needs access to a large and varied stockpile of older series notes in ORIGINAL uncirculated condition.  As time moves forward, this becomes more difficult as the number of notes meeting the required criteria dwindles and becomes increasingly disbursed.  It also does not help matters that the majority of people, including experts, have trouble identifying notes that have been altered.

I have a bundle of 100 1967 centennial bills that have at least 3 different sizes of bills in it.
Some have waves, some do not.

A consideration with respect to discussions on wider than specified notes is the impact of dimensions on the usability of the banknote reader for the visually impaired. The Bank of Canada has been supplying through CNIB banknote readers that are designed to denominate banknotes for the visually impaired.

There have been several generations of banknote readers which have been designed to read the notes from the bird series forward.

In order to use the banknote readers the notes have to be inserted in a certain way. In the first series of readers the note longer than 153mm cannot be inserted into the reader without bending it and therefore affecting the use of the reader.

In the second generation readers the banknote wider than 70.3mm cannot be inserted into the reader without bending it and therefore affecting its use.

Shorter notes can be inserted but the possibility exists that they may not be read correctly.

I would therefore argue that at least for the paper banknotes of the bird series and journey series there would have been a better level of quality control to ensure that they were not cut greater or shorter  than the specification. Of course some cuts out of specifications +/- tolerances can happen in any production process but they would be very small exceptions. Anything that is widespread would cause a problem.

Some banknote specifications call for a size to be within +/- 1mm of the specifications for various reasons. There are also specifications related to non-square cuts which has been a problem with some early polymer notes.

I have been measuring out of specifications notes for journey series since and polymer series since 2011 and surprisingly new and circulated notes (other than heavily creased ones or notes with heavy surface undulations) are well within +/-1 mm. In fact it has been highly uncommon to come across notes that vary by greater than 0.7mm either way.

In journey series notes and polymer notes there is a very easy method to identify if any shortening (or lengthening) is happening because of impacts of use related factors such as moisture or it is happening from the initial cutting during production. This is even true with heavily soiled notes. If anyone is interested in this topic I am happy to meet up in Toronto area to demonstrate this or you may get a clue on this from one of the articles in CPMS journal related notes with cut BPN.

All good information.  The oversize $2 radar note shown in the first post above, however, was printed about 12 years before the Bird series started.

A consideration with respect to discussions on wider than specified notes is the impact of dimensions on the usability of the banknote reader for the visually impaired. The Bank of Canada has been supplying through CNIB banknote readers that are designed to denominate banknotes for the visually impaired.

There have been several generations of banknote readers which have been designed to read the notes from the bird series forward.

In order to use the banknote readers the notes have to be inserted in a certain way. In the first series of readers the note longer than 153mm cannot be inserted into the reader without bending it and therefore affecting the use of the reader.

In the second generation readers the banknote wider than 70.3mm cannot be inserted into the reader without bending it and therefore affecting its use.

Shorter notes can be inserted but the possibility exists that they may not be read correctly.

I would therefore argue that at least for the paper banknotes of the bird series and journey series there would have been a better level of quality control to ensure that they were not cut greater or shorter  than the specification. Of course some cuts out of specifications +/- tolerances can happen in any production process but they would be very small exceptions. Anything that is widespread would cause a problem.

Some banknote specifications call for a size to be within +/- 1mm of the specifications for various reasons. There are also specifications related to non-square cuts which has been a problem with some early polymer notes.

I have been measuring out of specifications notes for journey series since and polymer series since 2011 and surprisingly new and circulated notes (other than heavily creased ones or notes with heavy surface undulations) are well within +/-1 mm. In fact it has been highly uncommon to come across notes that vary by greater than 0.7mm either way.

In journey series notes and polymer notes there is a very easy method to identify if any shortening (or lengthening) is happening because of impacts of use related factors such as moisture or it is happening from the initial cutting during production. This is even true with heavily soiled notes. If anyone is interested in this topic I am happy to meet up in Toronto area to demonstrate this or you may get a clue on this from one of the articles in CPMS journal related notes with cut BPN.