Hi, I know it is tricky...
Here is an excerpt from an email from a Bank of Canada Official to me (unedited):
“The Bank of Canada stopped identifying replacement notes with a special
identification in 1996 and has adopted a procedure commonly used among other
central banks. Notes are now taken from regular production and used as
replacements to replace notes found during the examination process that did
not meet the quality standards. This procedure is less time consuming and
more practical for both the Bank and its printers. They enter circulation
through the normal distribution process.”
*****
Okay- now brick hunting by many is needed to confirm the details.
Is it from a printing ream of xxxxx many notes?
This can only be determined by the skip number pattern from one FP/BP combination to the next.
From that, we can determine the ream size. For example, the current $5s are 40,000 notes per ream (ignoring the residual reams).
Are the replacements in a range of 40,000 then?
If there is confirmation from multiple sources of replacements found in a sheet like pattern, then probably sheet replacements - yes.
Suppose I get four consecutive bricks of AOM $5s. (I am making all of these serial numbers up)
In each brick, note AOM xxxx577 is missing, and replaced with AOK xxxx213. What that means is that it is likly a sheet replacement, since a SHEET was pulled out (of the 40 brick stack), and replaced with the AOK sheet.
Part I
Now, searcher "A" may find this in Vancouver, searcher B in Edmonton, Searcher C and D somewhere in Eastern Canada. When we collaborate the findings, we can determine with high accuracy that the inserts are in sheets.
Part II
Are all the sheets in the ream used? (That means, are all 40,000 notes set aside for inserts?)
Well, suppose through multiple incidents, 4 people find a AOK xxxx213 in a series of bricks. Down the road, maybe in further AOM bricks, there may be more collaborative finds that show AOK xxx990. Again at another time- AOK xxxx054.
From this we can see that within a group of 1000 high notes, replacements were found in the essentailly the entire region. Low, mid and high - therefore leading us to the highly probably case that the ENTIRE 1000 sheets were used as replacements.
All the info needs to be collaborated so that we can be accurate in this manner.
Hope that is more clear and to the point.
Now here is the thing. This above is for sheet replacements.
Suppose it is single note replacements:
I get 4 bricks of $5s. Each brick is missing two notes. The notes replaceing them are xxxx005 and xxxx006 in the first brick. In the second brick, they are replaced by xxxx007 and xxxx008, and so on, making a run of 8 consecutive replacement notes, however found in 4 separate bricks. Many bricks later, another replacement xxxx0048 may be found... Still within a very tight range.
These are very much more difficult to find. Instead of the range being 40,000, it could be probably as small as 1000, as if they just took a finished brick out of the ream and set it aside for the replacement purpose. These notes of course will all have the same FP/BP combination, despite being found in various bricks.
If I ever find any of these, I hold on to them. I have found none. Zero. But they are out there... unlike the other replacements which seem to appear on the trading post every so often, I doubt many people will budge on these for now...
If you find one, hold on to it.
I hope this has been a good brief explanation.
Thx
H
