India: Specimen Banknotes to be Numbered

[Bimat]

RBI has decided to issued numbered specimen banknotes from now on. The number will be printed on the watermark area of the banknote, the actual number of the specimen banknote will remain 000000.

Earlier, there was no record of how many specimen banknotes were printed in which year. Image Source: Prem Pues Kumar on FB.

Aditya

[Figleaf]

Yes, it is very important to know how many worthless banknotes were printed

Peter

[dheer]

Good now one can buy fancy numbers in specimen as well.

[Pabitra]

Yes, it is very important to know how many worthless banknotes were printed

From collector's point of view, specimen notes are worth more than actual notes 😄

[Bimat]

Yes, it is very important to know how many worthless banknotes were printed

The reason for doing so is simple: The rampant corruption in printing presses. You can practically get any error note printed 'on order'. I have seen some errors in Indian banknotes which were impossible to make "by mistake". With the new system, it will be very difficult to print specimen banknotes on order but I'm sure dealers will find some way to overcome this.

Good now one can buy fancy numbers in specimen as well.

Yes, I thought of that too. That also depends on how many specimen banknotes printed for each denomination. If there are only 500 printed, then there aren't many fancy numbers I can think of...

Aditya

[dheer]

Yes, I thought of that too. That also depends on how many specimen banknotes printed for each denomination. If there are only 500 printed, then there aren't many fancy numbers I can think of...

Aditya

Don't worry. I can get any fancy numbered specimen that you need.  . I have 10 copies of Specimen with 0786, extremely rare only one printed per Governor, but by error 10 were printed 

But yes its a good attempt to stop the practise of pilferage of specimen. This was hopefully they will keep a record of the issues and there will be someone responsible for every numbered note and it would be easy to trace a leak.

My view is once the specimen have served the purpose, after a year or so, all the specimen be recalled from the institutions they were sent to and auction them in market. It would raise good funds for the Govt.

[Bimat]

Apparently, there are number of varieties in which the specimen banknotes will be numbered. Or possibly, a different numbering scheme for each denomination?

RBI to issue of ₹ 10 banknotes with inset letter 'L'

Date : Apr 13, 2016

The Reserve Bank of India will shortly issue ₹ 10 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi Series-2005, with the inset letter 'L', bearing the signature of Dr. Raghuram G.Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, and the year of printing '2016' printed on the reverse of the banknote.

The design of these banknotes to be issued now is similar in all respects to the ₹ 10 banknotes in Mahatma Gandhi Series- 2005 issued earlier, except that the numerals in both the number panels will be in the ascending size from left to right while the first three alpha-numeric characters (prefix) will remain constant in size as revealed by the image of the note below-

Such banknotes with ascending size of numerals in the number panels have already been issued in ₹ 50, ₹ 100, ₹ 500, and ₹ 1000 denominations.

All the banknotes in the denomination of ₹ 10 issued by the Bank in the past will continue to be legal tender.

Ajit Prasad
Assistant Adviser

Press Release : 2015-2016/2413

Source: RBI Press Release

[kishoretkm]

Hi,
This question may be silly for few or many, but i would like to get answer for this one from long time it was in my mind to ask expert.

Specimen signature currency.
Serious coin collectors, seniors always share the specimen currencies in FB or in our WOC forum, but i want to know where these currencies will be available? to whom can approach to get,
Is it available to everyone or any only influence people can get this currency (sorry to ask these type of question, its just curiosity).

Bcos still now i didnt get or see this kind of note in my life other than FB images/WOC images.
Even I was asked many dealers and they said its very costly and cant afford to get these kind of note after that only i'm curious about this note and atleast i should get one currency from this topic for my collection.


Second question on Error note.
1. When they printing, will they do testing or checking before it deliver to RBI. bcos how its comes in to circulation with major error, extra paper. One of my friend told me usually printing press people will cut/using strudder the error currencies and they will not allow to leave outside of press to RBi with error.

But how this could be possible with huge error note, without number print, or different no on one currencies or mis print. etc..

Can anyone please explain me and i would be very happy if my questions are clarified here. Advance Thanks.

Apparently, there are number of varieties in which the specimen banknotes will be numbered. Or possibly, a different numbering scheme for each denomination?

RBI to issue of ₹ 10 banknotes with inset letter 'L'

Date : Apr 13, 2016

The Reserve Bank of India will shortly issue ₹ 10 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi Series-2005, with the inset letter 'L', bearing the signature of Dr. Raghuram G.Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, and the year of printing '2016' printed on the reverse of the banknote.

The design of these banknotes to be issued now is similar in all respects to the ₹ 10 banknotes in Mahatma Gandhi Series- 2005 issued earlier, except that the numerals in both the number panels will be in the ascending size from left to right while the first three alpha-numeric characters (prefix) will remain constant in size as revealed by the image of the note below-

Such banknotes with ascending size of numerals in the number panels have already been issued in ₹ 50, ₹ 100, ₹ 500, and ₹ 1000 denominations.

All the banknotes in the denomination of ₹ 10 issued by the Bank in the past will continue to be legal tender.

Ajit Prasad
Assistant Adviser

Press Release : 2015-2016/2413

Source: RBI Press Release

[dheer]

Hi,
This question may be silly for few or many, but i would like to get answer for this one from long time it was in my mind to ask expert.

Specimen signature currency.
Serious coin collectors, seniors always share the specimen currencies in FB or in our WOC forum, but i want to know where these currencies will be available? to whom can approach to get,
Is it available to everyone or any only influence people can get this currency (sorry to ask these type of question, its just curiosity).

Bcos still now i didnt get or see this kind of note in my life other than FB images/WOC images.
Even I was asked many dealers and they said its very costly and cant afford to get these kind of note after that only i'm curious about this note and atleast i should get one currency from this topic for my collection.

Whenever new Governor joins, new plates are created and to test out Specimen notes are printed. This is also done when there is a design change even if Governor is same. They are printed in limited quantity. These are then sent to various key officials including State Run Bank. Often to educate them about the new notes so that they are aware and can build adequate fraud check process.

This then gets interesting, once their usage is over ... i.e. it gets approved and people in Banks get familiar, these are not used or referred. These then find their way out illegally into collectors hands.

So you will not find these in circulation.
You cannot book or RBI/Currency Press do not sell these at premium.

Once it finds its way out, its next to impossible to find the source of leakage as quite a few Official would claim they got misplaced or are in safety vaults or destroyed.

In order to curb these practises, RBI has now [few months back] started numbering the specimen notes in the watermark window. So if a note finds its way out, RBI can trace who this particular note was issued to and take further action. How successful this would be only time will tell.

So forget about it. And quite a few who put pics in facebook, they don't own the notes, they just get images from somewhere and showcase just to get pride. Most collectors would hide the fact they have these notes. A decade back when Jhunjhunwala came up with the book on currencies, police had come knocking to his door in search of specimen which they didn't find.
And there are tons of fakes specimen floated to capitalize on this collector crazy.

It is illegal to hold specimen currencies

[kishoretkm]

Thanks Dheer for your detailed explanation about specimen currencies, cleared now.
.
Hereafter Will not worry about this specimen currencies which is not in my album.

Whenever new Governor joins, new plates are created and to test out Specimen notes are printed. This is also done when there is a design change even if Governor is same. They are printed in limited quantity. These are then sent to various key officials including State Run Bank. Often to educate them about the new notes so that they are aware and can build adequate fraud check process.

This then gets interesting, once their usage is over ... i.e. it gets approved and people in Banks get familiar, these are not used or referred. These then find their way out illegally into collectors hands.

So you will not find these in circulation.
You cannot book or RBI/Currency Press do not sell these at premium.

Once it finds its way out, its next to impossible to find the source of leakage as quite a few Official would claim they got misplaced or are in safety vaults or destroyed.

In order to curb these practises, RBI has now [few months back] started numbering the specimen notes in the watermark window. So if a note finds its way out, RBI can trace who this particular note was issued to and take further action. How successful this would be only time will tell.

So forget about it. And quite a few who put pics in facebook, they don't own the notes, they just get images from somewhere and showcase just to get pride. Most collectors would hide the fact they have these notes. A decade back when Jhunjhunwala came up with the book on currencies, police had come knocking to his door in search of specimen which they didn't fine.
And there are tons of fakes specimen floated to capitalize on this collector crazy.

[dheer]

Hi,
This question may be silly for few or many, but i would like to get answer for this one from long time it was in my mind to ask expert.

Second question on Error note.
1. When they printing, will they do testing or checking before it deliver to RBI. bcos how its comes in to circulation with major error, extra paper. One of my friend told me usually printing press people will cut/using strudder the error currencies and they will not allow to leave outside of press to RBi with error.

But how this could be possible with huge error note, without number print, or different no on one currencies or mis print. etc..

Can anyone please explain me and i would be very happy if my questions are clarified here. Advance Thanks.

Short answer, its pure oversight due to the workload of people involved in QC at Currency Press.

Once the notes are printed, there is stringent quality control. When the notes are packed in bundles of 100, every bundle is physically counted, verified for duplicate numbers, extra paper, incorrect signatures. This is done by 2 independent persons before the notes leave the Currency Press.
So on a fresh note rim [10 bundles] you can actually see a piece of paper with signatures of 2 officials who have verified the notes.

It then travels to various RBI currency chests and then to individual Bank's Currency Chests. When the notes are drawn from the chest for the first time, these are again supposed to be counted and any error notes sent back to Currency Press.

So inspite of this errors do occur, specially at the Currency Press. They are understaffed. However generally they don't wilfully send-out a currency note except for oversight.

Remember in the initial Rs 50 design there was a Flag missing on Parliament. Only the flag post is present. So it does happen. Human errors.

At Currency Press due to paucity of time, the counting is generally done rapid, serial number are only checked first and last [01, 00] assuming in between its correct ... as the workload is more, they are focused to pass quite a bit ... plus reporting an error is a huge paperwork for the officials. They have to remove the note from bundle, fill in paperwork detailing the error. The entire sequence numbering goes for toss ... so at times if they have found enough errors for the day, they just hang up their boots and pass the rest  . Remember Govt introduced "Star" notes to replace error notes in bundles. So its not that officials in the Currency Press are not working ...

At the Banks currency chest, more often these are not checked and directly reach the Teller. Now the Teller has to count and generally notices these errors. He is smart enough to keep these aside. These then find the way into market. I know few tellers who didn't do this for money but for fun and have a decent collection of such errors.
At times if there is someone who makes a large withdrawal in cash ... the entire bundles as sealed are given off on trust ... if the person who withdraws is a gujji [more business savy] he would look for such errors and keep then aside to sell ... if its gone off to large Organization they would just distribute the cash as wages to people ... so at times one can pick up such error notes from circulation, its quite rare.

[kishoretkm]

ohh, Great explanation and understanding how they are working hard...here im simply telling their work progress/QC, but understand how much workload they have.

One more time Thanks Dheer to detail explanation of how Error notes escaped from press.

Short answer, its pure oversight due to the workload of people involved in QC at Currency Press.

Once the notes are printed, there is stringent quality control. When the notes are packed in bundles of 100, every bundle is physically counted, verified for duplicate numbers, extra paper, incorrect signatures. This is done by 2 independent persons before the notes leave the Currency Press.
So on a fresh note rim [10 bundles] you can actually see a piece of paper with signatures of 2 officials who have verified the notes.

It then travels to various RBI currency chests and then to individual Bank's Currency Chests. When the notes are drawn from the chest for the first time, these are again supposed to be counted and any error notes sent back to Currency Press.

So inspite of this errors do occur, specially at the Currency Press. They are understaffed. However generally they don't wilfully send-out a currency note except for oversight.

Remember in the initial Rs 50 design there was a Flag missing on Parliament. Only the flag post is present. So it does happen. Human errors.

At Currency Press due to paucity of time, the counting is generally done rapid, serial number are only checked first and last [01, 00] assuming in between its correct ... as the workload is more, they are focused to pass quite a bit ... plus reporting an error is a huge paperwork for the officials. They have to remove the note from bundle, fill in paperwork detailing the error. The entire sequence numbering goes for toss ... so at times if they have found enough errors for the day, they just hang up their boots and pass the rest  . Remember Govt introduced "Star" notes to replace error notes in bundles. So its not that officials in the Currency Press are not working ...

At the Banks currency chest, more often these are not checked and directly reach the Teller. Now the Teller has to count and generally notices these errors. He is smart enough to keep these aside. These then find the way into market. I know few tellers who didn't do this for money but for fun and have a decent collection of such errors.
At times if there is someone who makes a large withdrawal in cash ... the entire bundles as sealed are given off on trust ... if the person who withdraws is a gujji [more business savy] he would look for such errors and keep then aside to sell ... if its gone off to large Organization they would just distribute the cash as wages to people ... so at times one can pick up such error notes from circulation, its quite rare.