Recently in Banknotes Category

The interesting misconception that came about through my research for my previous article on Star Notes was (from a coin collectors uneducated about banknotes view) that myself and other numismatists I know always just assumed that a star note was the same numbered note as the faulty note but with a star on the end denoting that it was a replacement (this star replacing the last digit of the serial number) .This is because a star note has one less digit in the serial number.

A question was put to me that if there were two soiled notes in a run of ten then there would be 2 identical star notes wouldn't there -because the star replaced the last digit of the serial number?

This is incorrect, a completely separate run of notes is printed. Then one is just slipped into the bundle when a soiled note is found. Therefore the star note's serial number has no relationship at all to the soiled note that it replaced.

Star replacement banknotes are pre-decimal and paper decimal notes with serial numbers ending with a star or asterisk. Thus being named a star note. These notes were issued from 1948 to 1972 in Australia. They were used to replace faulty, soiled or damaged notes during the printing process. They were introduced to allow sections of 100 notes to start at 01 and finish at 00 to assist tellers with counting notes. There was no longer a need for replacement notes with the introduction of automated counting systems .

The USA began using the star replacement note system in 1910. Australia was slow to adopt the practice favouring to hand stamp the original serial number of a soiled note onto it's replacement. The star note system was introduced in Australia in 1948 to replace this laborious practice. Star notes were produced in a special printing run and when a problem note was found it was simply replaced with a star note. These star notes were the ten shilling, pound and five pound notes. There were no ten pound star notes produced. The star on a pre-decimal star note is a hollow five pointed star.

Decimal star notes were always printed with the prefix serial number Z and the following numbers corresponded to the denomination.

• ZA for $1 ie ZAA00001*
  
• ZF for $2 ie ZFA00001*
  
• ZN for $5 ie ZNA00001*
  
• ZS for $10 ie ZSA00001*
  
• ZX for $20 ie ZXA00001*

On average there was one star note to every 200-300 ordinary notes. $50 notes were introduced in 1973 and were followed in 1984 by the $100 note so there were no star notes issued for these denominations. Although still named a star note these decimal issues have an asterisk after the serial number.