Bricks. Why Replacement Notes are sometimes not cheap.

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Well, everyone wants to know. Why when "the list" comes out are some replacements at $100 or higher even.  Below describes an aspect that goes beyond the actual rarity of the note (ie there were "xy found"). Some stuff that many people may not have thought about before.  I know I never did...

Question: What is with these prices?

The answer: You need to factor in the cost of doing the research.
Cost A: Paying the fees to buy the bricks.
Cost B: Taking the Time to do it all (can be several hours in a day)
Cost C: Transportation to and from banks, gas cost.
Cost D: Transaction fees, based on Dollar amount of cash. (Alot more than going over your monthly withdrawal limit)
Cost E: time cost in inputting here and sending it off to the appropriate people/place.
Cost F: Goodwill costs, such as buying a few rounds when the time is right.

I may have missed some.
These costs add up.

Here is a week of mine.  I found in total, I think 7 or 10 replacements  (yes, replacements), inserted into the bricks (how they got the name "insert note").  These replacements were all AOK or AOH.  The info has been already sent to sudzee and Gilles.


Okay- Week commencing March 27th, through to March 31st of this year. 
Brick info.  Note: all info has been sent prior to this post.
March 27th.
BTE 9600 70/70
BTE 9601 96/84
BTE 9602 85/90
BTE 9603 68/63
AOR 5245 ____ (forgot to get FP/BP) - 3 AOK REPLACEMENTS
ALS 1146
ALS 1147 (again forgot FP/BP for these bricks)
Total: $85,000.
My cost of ordering alone: $77

March 28:
AOR 5247 73/62, 3 AOK REPLACEMENTS
AOJ 6152 95/65, 1 AOH REPLACEMENT
AOH 9664 92/87, couple AOH replacements
AOJ ____ didnt even record it.  Either rushed or an empty brick.
Total: $20,000
My cost of ordering alone: $0.00 (luck helps)

March 29th
ALS 1108 87/92
ALS 1109 86/97
ALS 1839 84/96
BTE 7272 95/65
BTE 7273 91/82
BTE 7274 80/59
BTE 7275 69/57
BTE 7209 89/89
AOP 7419 57/69
AHF 9126800-999 60/94
BKM 6908000-499 99/99
Total: $175,000
My cost of ordering alone: $95.70

March 30th
ALS 1556 56/74
ALS 1557 63/68
ALS 1558 90/85
ALS 1559 84/96
ALS 1837 63/68
ALS 1838 90/85
AOP 8751 79/75
AOJ 7420 65/95
AHF 9202 73/62
BKM 6909 89/89
Total: $275,000
My cost of ordering alone: $88.00

March 31st:
BTE 7210 83/71
BTE 7211 62/73
BTF 5815 81/66
BTF 5814 67/88
BTF 5813 93/98
BTF 5812 94/60
ALS 1580 65/95
ALS 1581 82/91
ALS 1582 72/61
ALS 1583 75/79
Total: $180,000
My cost of ordering alone: $110.00


Okay so for the week, that means I handled $735,000.00
My out of pocket costs, ONLY factoring in Cost A: $370.70.
If I knew the other costs to the penny I would probably break out in tears.  (Sad but true).


I found: a lot of radars, and a couple of rotators.

I found: a couple of AOH or AOK replacements.
I found: out enough potential "sheet replacement" info to cover reams of notes with a face value of at least 11 MILLION dollars. That is all without finding a single replacement.  ($11 Million is the face value of all the notes in all the reams considered).
Of course, single note replacements area different animal, and I am not going to explain that here.

So, here is the question: 
Will I make my money back?   After Costs A through F, probably not even close.

Are replacement /brick hunters justified in their initial prices?  
Well, look at the cost.
Gilles mentions this in a line in his quarterly newsletter. It wasn't until I had this one particular week when I realized that it costs a ton of money to do this.

Nevermind the cost of foregone interest or return on investment.  Yikes.

If this rate keeps up, will brick searchers back out?  Which brick searchers will be left- what does thatmean for amount of replacements to be found and recovered?

Anyway, Just something to think about.

I agree, It is costly but on the other side of the bill,

"You can't put a price on the pursuit of knowledge."
              Probably quoted by some mon who had lotsa bucks.

So why do I we do it?   

The joy of the hunt.
Hopefully followed by the joy of a find.
You must have found an equal number of repeaters with the radars.
The satisfaction of having gathered a lot of good data on behalf of all collectors.
And you simply enjoy this hobby.

"A bit crazy helps" PD 

Well PD, your right. On all of those points. Especially the "crazy" part. 

Where on the earth you find the time to do all this research? ,

You have handled more than 40 bricks in that week.  Counting 1 hour per brick, it takes more than 40 hours....without counting the time you takes to go to the banks...I can understand if you are on retirement...but if you're on a 9-5 schedule, I don't really see...

Without counting that you must have a very good credit line... so adding to the already mentionned costs, you pay the interests on your loan... . 

Unless you're a millionnaire

It was on spring break.  So no work (but it was probably the most exhausting week of my life).
And when you get empty bricks, it can take as little as 10 minutes to do agood check.  Just keep the radar and you have all the info you need.
Millionaire? I wish.  Sometime luck helps.  See "Cost F" 

It is a tough thing.... It is like searching for the meaning of life and your picking up the tab! 

I must also say that MANY people are not so fortunate with their costs to get bricks and some people will pay that much for a single brick.

Everyone MUST remember that if bricks searchers slow down or stop then who is left to research replacements? BoC Sure won't say a peep about it! 

I agree prices have gotten quite high very quickly but all factors do need to be taken into account. As we press on further we will be finding less and less Inserts. This is only the tip of the iceberg here. Rigth now you can easily go through 80 Bricks of $10's with out finding a single Insert and $20's are almost the same.

Just give it some time and $5 will be in the same boat.... You can blame the printers for doing such on an outstanding job printing error-free notes!   

Good point too.  Hobby ==> Not forced. lol.  True true true.  I'm going for a beer.

Very True...

No Brick Searching = No Inserts Found

No Inserts Found = No Insert Ranges

No Inserts Ranges = The end of Inserts

No Pressure.... 

It's very true that's a choice, I'm myself a small brick researcher, but it's my choice.  But since the time I do this research, I'm not sure that I got the breakeven point...It's the pleasure to find something interesting that pays for all the trouble...more than the cash I can have for it.

And I know very well that it's very frustrating if you go through tens of bricks without finding any better than a 3-digit radar.  At least, with the BABN, you're sure to get a radar note. It's better than nothing.  The CBN were more frustrating because of the mixed-up bricks  where you're were even not sure to get a radar note.  But we could find a lot more replacement notes in the CBN bricks.  With the BABN, the inserts will be much more rarer, so the prices of the BABN insert notes will stay high...

 I guess the cost of searching will have something to do with the asking price of an insert but really the value of an insert is determined more by supply and demand. If there were 10 times more searchers than the asking price of most inserts would have to drop just to get rid of them all.

 Some of the scarcer prefix inserts are higher priced because there are more collectors needing the note to complete there sets of one of each insert than there are the amount of notes available.

I don't really collect inserts much because there seems to be a possiblity of error or fraud. I remember a member of this forum saying that he got a brick of GPZ and they were all above 9.0 mil. So 1000 inserts in sequence?

Plus I could have a note with the number
AOB 2308709 and it's valued at $200 but if the number is
AOB 2208709 it's valued at $16. I don't know about that.

Just a few of my thoughts on this. I do have a few inserts BTW.



 

I have been searching bricks for a time before joining this forum but it really was my intention to look for errors as opposed to inserts.  I never really knew much about them because the only time replacements meant anything was when a note had an asterisk on it.  I guess the concern I would have collecting them is the fact that the range can seem to change as well as the amount of individual ranges so I would think the some notes unless kept may eventually be in the insert range but not known at that time.  Unfortunately not all of us can keep everything we find in hopes that the future finds turn our notes into something others actually want.  The other question that Gary brought out is fraud. I have found some ALK inserts in an ALR brick but as of yet no one else has found any.  My understanding is that unless someone else confirms this then they are not looked at as inserts.  So do I keep them in hopes that somewhere down the road someone else finds some to confirm my find or do I spend them.  As of now I will hang onto them since I know what I found but only time will tell.
And as for Hudsons' comments searching bricks can be costly for sure especially in my area being a rural community banks can be 30-45 minutes away and rural branches are reluctant to deal with a large cash transaction because most branches here have less than a $3000 on hand balance and robberies are very common (6 in the last 4 months). So in most cases you have to deal with multiple banks with different delivery dates in different towns. But it is true that no one forces you to brick search but sometimes the one time you find a true treasure makes it worth while.
Only my opinion.  (Oh yeah brick searchers are all retired millionaires.  I WISH)

FRIEDSQUID

Yes supply ultimately has something to do with it.

Here is the thing. Some people saw inserts as easy money, thus searching AND immediate selling occured.  We have all witnessed that to some degree.

This next thing drives me up the frikin wall.

WHY is there confusion about whether or not a range is a range.  Gilles doesn't just sit there and invent them.  This is what my papers addressed.  I am making a more reader friendly version as we speak so people can easily understand why a note that may be XXXXXX apart from another was printed in a regular note and not an insert, or why they both may be.

possibility of error or fraud

To speak to this, there are enough people on the horn to GP to let him know if things don't make sense. 

A FRAUDULENT insert claim will outright contradict the gathered info of a ream.  You CANNOT hide it, and pretend that it is "okay".   The matrix I developed was for that purpose- so all of you out there could see that fraudulent claims will be disproven.  The trick is, you have to learn how to understand the tables.  I bet you I could count on two hands the number of people who actually went through the article to really understand it.  That is why I built it, so that there would be some PEACE in knowing that fraudulent claims would not hold up to the logic. 

An ERROR in claim... well thats why there has to be verification. 

AOB 2308709 and it's valued at $200 but if the number is
AOB 2208709 it's valued at $16. I don't know about that.

Okay let us look at the facts:  Suppose these were both inserts from a ream of notes where the ENTIRE ream was used as replacements.
That means there had to be 100,000 notes at least all within that ream. 

Were AOB $5s printed in reams of 100,000 or greater? If the answer is No, then we know they came from different printing reams. Which means: that is one ream was set aside for replacements, then you can only include the notes from THAT particular ream.  Not the reams above or below it, or even 100,000 away.

 PLEASE please please read the article.  It talks about this.


Especialy now, since we have the BABN note printing method NAILED - well to the degree that we need for determining replacements and ream size.

Okay now I am just going to chill out and relax, and finish making my presentation- so that I could give it to someone who has never seen a banknote before - and that they would understand what the heck is going on.  That is my goal, wish me luck.

There are always "weird" things that happen.  Don't know why, but look at the facts.  There is alot of work that needs to be undermined before any faith in the legitimacy of replacements should be cast - in particular sheet replacements. The Single note replacements, I do not have data for to make a comment.

IF IT A TOO OF RANGE INSERT THERE THE PRICE WILL GO DOWN AND IT WILL HAVE LESS OF COLECTIONNEUR

That is not true entirely.

How many were found in UNC?

Forget inserts, look at BER 2003!  There is a range of "over 7 million" but HOW MANY were found?   That is an extreme example, and inserts are no different.

there is one BER 2003, not 3-4 or 6 range

BER 2003 Confirmed by the BoC  is good
BER 2004 Confirmed by the BoC  is good
BER 2004  9.675M - 9.720M  one range not Confirmed by the BoC 
 is good

HOH 2004 Confirmed by the BoC  is good
HOH 2005 Confirmed by the BoC  is good
HOH 2005 7.060M - 7.100M
HOH 2005 9.000M - 9.060M
HOH 2005 9.120M - 9.160M
HOH 2005 9.200M - 9.400M
HOH 2005 9.440M - 9.680M
HOH 2005 9.760M - 9.840M
HOH 2005 9.880M - 9.920M  not Confirmed by the BoC
not good