Birds test $5s with polymer

News: Welcome to the Canadian Paper Money Forum.

This was interesting - a footnote in the Supplement to the Bank of Canada Review, just released.
Anybody know the prefix(es) involved?
"In the mid-1990s, the Bank issued 100,000 experimental $5 notes of the
then-current Birds of Canada series printed on a substrate consisting of
a polymer core with paper on each side to assess their durability. The
supplier could not produce the material on a sufficient scale, however,
and the Bank discontinued the project."

I read about this a few years ago on page 50 of this BoC document.  They had apparently made 100,000 Birds $5 test notes using "Luminus" substrate and put them into circulation.  Never having heard of it before I started a thread about it in Test Notes forum - the thread seems to have been deleted.

Nobody else in the collecting community seems to have any more info about these except what the BoC released in the doc I linked above.

I read about this a few years ago on page 50 of this BoC document.  They had apparently made 100,000 Birds $5 test notes using "Luminus" substrate and put them into circulation.  Never having heard of it before I started a thread about it in Test Notes forum - the thread seems to have been deleted.

Nobody else in the collecting community seems to have any more info about these except what the BoC released in the doc I linked above.

These were internal test notes and we'd probably never know the prefix used.

They were NOT internal test notes.  The BoC article I linked to above says that 100,000 of them were tested in active circulation.  And Bob's quote above mentions issued.  That's definitely not internal.

Anybody know the prefix(es) involved?

Got the answer from the Bank of Canada today.

GOG0100000 to GOG01999999

More info in this thread in the test notes forum.

I showed the referenced document to Don Olmstead a few torex's ago and he said that he remembers people showing him Birds fives that were thicker than others (might not be his exact words, but close enough). To that, I've got a GOY on my desk with some writing on it about "I won this from George on June (I forget the date) 1996." that I got from circulation and since it's in EF condition, I was going to compare it to some the Birds 5's in my collection, to see if it was thinker. But I guess I don't have to now! 

John