Star note value: what a replacement note is worth

A star at the end of a serial number means the note came off a sheet printed to replace one spoiled at the factory, and what one is worth turns on how few notes that run held. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing publishes the size of every run, every month. In August 2026 the Washington facility's only star run was 320,000 $100 notes; July 2026 carried a $1 star run of 400,000, and October 2025 a $2 run of 3,200,000. Ordinary blocks in the same reports ran from 6,400,000 to 57,600,000 notes, so a star run can be one percent of a normal block or a tenth of it.

The star notes with real money behind them are older and scarcer, and every price quoted here comes from a collector guide or an auction. An uncirculated Series 1953 $2 red seal star, one that was never folded, ran $75 to over $150 in CoinWeek's guide of 25 September 2025, against $20 to $40 for the same note without the star. For a star note that turns up in change today, none of the sources behind this page prints a retail figure at all.

What the star actually means

The Bureau's own wording: when an imperfect sheet is caught after the serial numbers have been overprinted, the whole sheet is replaced with a star sheet, because reusing the exact serial number would be "costly and time consuming". The replacement carries its own serial with a star where the suffix letter would be.

Two things follow from that. A star note is not a copy of the note it replaced, and no twin anywhere carries the same serial. And what gets replaced is a whole sheet at a time: the July 2026 $1 star run of 400,000 notes came off 8,000 sheets, fifty notes to a sheet, while the $100 star run the month after was 10,000 sheets of thirty-two.

The rest of the serial is worth reading. Through Series 1995 every Federal Reserve Note carried one letter, eight digits and one letter, and the $1 and $2 still do. From Series 1996, notes of $5 and up carry two letters in front: the first stands for the series, the second (A to L) for the Federal Reserve Bank that issued it. O is never used because it reads as a zero, and Z is held back for test printings.

The star is not always at the end

A star in front of the serial number is not a sign that a note has been tampered with. On Series 1953 United States Notes the star sits to the left of the serial, and the BEP moved it to the right on later notes; Wikipedia's article on replacement banknotes shows a 1957 $1 note captioned the same way, star preceding the serial. A star in front is the same thing as a star behind.

The size of the run is the whole game

These are three star runs and one ordinary block for scale, all read off the BEP's own monthly production reports and written in the notation those reports use.

A 320,000-note star run is one percent of a 32,000,000-note block. A 3.2 million one is a tenth of it, which is a different animal entirely, and it is why two star notes that look identical in the hand can be worth quite different money. The reports are published every month, and they name the series and the district behind every run.

What the run size does not give you is a price. None of the sources behind this page prints a retail figure for a current star note out of a till, so treat the run as a position on a scale and let a dealer or a completed sale supply the number.

What the scarce stars are worth

In this corner of the market the grade travels with the price, and the letters after a grade number do as much work as the number: PPQ and EPQ are the grading services' marks for paper that is fully original, never pressed, washed or repaired. What the grades describe is its own subject, and on notes like these it is most of the money. Three of the rows below are price-guide ranges, one is a single eBay result, and the last is a lot with no published result.

The WEB note's $2,750 is a single eBay result, and one sale is one sale. An asking price is not a sale at all.

Fancy serial numbers: the patterns collectors pay for

Any one specific eight-digit serial has one chance in 99,999,999 of being printed (CoinWeek, 5 June 2018). The patterns worth knowing by name:

• Solid. All eight digits the same. The scarcest are the 9s. Previewing a Stack's Bowers sale in August 2021, CoinWeek reported that the BEP no longer prints up to that range for circulation, that Series 1974 was the last regular series to reach it, and that uncirculated small-size solid 9 notes often break the five-figure mark. One matched set of twelve 99999999 notes, one per district, came out of the 1995 $10 BEP Premium Set: 2,000 sets whose serials started at 99997999.
• Ladder. The digits in order, up or down, the full run of eight.
• Radar. Reads the same backwards. CoinWeek's own example is A12344321A.
• Repeater. The first four digits repeated as the last four.
• Binary. Only two different digits appear.
• Trinary. Only three.
• Low serial. The numbers at the very start of a run. A serial number 1 replacement $100, a 1934 Cleveland note graded PMG 66 EPQ, was a headline lot at Stack's Bowers on 12 March 2026.
• Birthday. Eight digits that read as a date.

A complete set of one pattern across the denominations is a genuine event: the 88888888 set Stack's Bowers took to its August Hong Kong sale, previewed by CoinWeek in June 2018, ran $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100, in series dated 2003 to 2013.

None of that comes out of a wallet. Every figure quoted on this page is for a note that was never folded.

Checking a serial takes seconds, and our serial number checker names every pattern above from the eight digits, and a few more besides. It stops there on purpose: the pattern is the only part of this a machine can settle.

What is not worth much

• 777. The BEP itself packages and sells "Lucky 777" $1 notes, in Series 1999, 2006 and 2009 wrappers. The sets resell for about $8 to $10 and a 777 out of circulation carries only a slight premium (CoinWeek, 1 July 2024).
• A number that merely looks interesting to you. A repeated pair in the middle is not a pattern.
• The series year, usually. It marks a design change, and with its suffix letter a signature change, not the year of printing: some 1935-dated $1 silver certificates were released as late as 1963. A few series really are scarce, the 1928E $2 above among them, but the date on the face is not what tells you.
• A worn note. Every price on this page is for an uncirculated note, and the grades are where most of that money sits.

Two star varieties with a paper trail

The 1935A $1 R and S experimental notes. A 1944 paper-durability test: 1,184,000 notes on regular paper overprinted with a red R and 1,184,000 on experimental paper overprinted with a red S, released on 20 June 1944. The star versions are a separate and much scarcer class: an R star, Fr. 1609*, graded PMG 66 EPQ was Lot 7009 at Stack's Bowers on 12 March 2026, and CoinWeek's preview of that sale publishes no result for it. The serial ranges and the wartime story sit with the other wartime notes.

The 1934-B $20 star from New York. The B-series run was very short, and one example in PCGS VF25, a circulated grade, carries Late-Finished Back Plate 204, certified as a production plate on 18 March 1944 and in use from 4 April 1944 to 2 October 1946. CoinWeek calls it potentially unique for its series and district. No sale price is published for it.

The 2013 duplicate serials, which we cannot document

Series 2013 $1 star notes are traded as "matched pairs", two notes said to carry the same serial number. We could not reach a BEP, PMG or auction-house page that documents the duplication, and what we did find was people offering pairs on collector forums. Until a grading service or an auction result says otherwise, a price quoted for one of these is a want rather than a sale.

Before you decide anything

Look at four things in order: a star, zeros at the front of the number, all eight digits matching, and whether the number reads the same in reverse. That covers the patterns with documented money behind them and takes about two seconds a note.

Then be honest about the paper. What turns up in a wallet is usually a curiosity, and a note that really might be worth hundreds goes to a grading service or across a dealer's counter with a person holding it; a photograph settles the pattern and nothing else. Do not flatten it, press it or tape it on the way there: every one of those is visible and every one is permanent.

What this article is based on: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on serial numbers for the star definition and the serial format, and its monthly production reports for August 2026, July 2026 and October 2025 for the run sizes; CoinWeek for the Series 1953 $2 and $5 notes, the 1928 $10 gold certificate star, the WEB note eBay sale, the 1928E $2 star, the solid 9 set, the 88888888 set, the radar definition, the Lucky 777 notes, the Spring 2026 Showcase lots and the 1934-B $20; and Wikipedia on replacement banknotes, the one-dollar bill and silver certificates for the star's position, the web press and the 1935-dated notes released into the 1960s. All read on 21 September 2026.