I was wondering why there are very few banks that would have new bills during the period of January to March (mostly Ontario and maybe Vancouver), and why many banks in Canada do not see their first order of new bills of certain denominations until April, for the most part.
I think, depending on what province the bank is located, if an order is placed in the middle of January, there's a risk of major delays in the likelihood that snowstorm activity could hamper with delivery, possibly causing a major impact on the bank's supply of money (it's much worse if banks run low on $5's and $20's and the shipment gets held back more than 2 days because of weather). Therefore, it's quite logical that, after Christmas, the bank would order a 3-month supply of the higher demand denominations, all of which would consist of recycled banknotes to do them until sometime in April, or close to it, when the weather gets better and traveling is smoother to allow for a better chance of a timely delivery.
But I think one denomination of banknote is not involved in this so-called 3-month supply of recycled banknotes: the $10 bill. Given that it has the lowest demand and lowest supply of all the banknotes currently in circulation, all banks that would normally order a 3-month supply or recycled high demand banknotes would have no problem ordering new $10 bills during the winter months. I think, in the bank's vision, if the bank runs out of $10s, and the order of $10s gets delayed due to severe weather of any kind, such delay will not have any impact on the bank's supply of money, since $10 bills are likely the lowest in priority among all the existing bills in circulation, plus they have enough of a supply of the surrounding denominations that such banks can get by without any $10 bills for at least one day. I have received crisp Journey $10 bills from the bank I went to near the end of January and sometime in February 2009, in fact.
I remember back in the spring of 2007, when the upgraded Journey $5 note was a few months into its run, the BoC announced it was doing a recall of any existing pre-2006 issue $5 notes and replacing them with the newer upgraded 2006 versions. I can see why they held off until the spring of 2007 to make such announcement - the BoC realized that a lot of banks in Canada had pre-ordered a 3-month supply of recycled $5 notes after Christmas 2006, and the BoC felt that by the end of March, those banks' supply of $5 notes would be nearly depleted, and it was by that time that the BoC ordered a recall of any pre-2006 issue $5 notes.
I guess, with that theory taken into consideration, I guess I will be waiting until at least April before I see new $5 and $20 bills head my way again.
