Rare PMG-certified Dollar Bills with Duplicated Serial Numbers in Stack's Bowers Auction

A rare pair of 2013 $1 Federal Reserve Notes with Duplicated Serial Numbers that Paper Money Guaranty® (PMG®) certified and encapsulated together are being offered in an upcoming sale. Online bidding is already underway for Stack’s Bowers’ American Numismatic Association Auction of US Currency, which will be held August 18, 2021.

The pair are replacements of 2013 $1 Federal Reserve Notes for the district of New York, each with the serial number B04436550* (lot 20478). The pair, one of only a handful that have been identified by the Zegers/Winograd Project, has an estimate of $10,000 to $15,000.

Two 2013 $1 Federal Reserve Notes, both with serial number B04436550*, graded PMG 66 Gem Uncirculated EPQ and graded PMG 35 Choice Very Fine and both pedigreed to the Zegers/Winograd Project. Click image to enlarge.

In 2014, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) accidentally assigned overlapping sets of serial numbers for replacements notes to its currency-printing facilities in both Washington, D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas. The overlap occurred from serial numbers B00000001* to B00250000* and B03200001* to B09600000*. On the lower right-side of the front of the note, the letters “FW” with the face plate number indicate it was printed in Fort Worth.

For this auction lot, the dollar printed in Fort Worth is graded PMG 66 Gem Uncirculated EPQ, while the Washington, D.C. dollar is graded PMG 35 Choice Very Fine. To celebrate this special pair, each note is encapsulated with PMG’s striking US Flag certification label. To learn more about special PMG labels, click here.

Millions of these notes are believed to exist, the challenge is not finding one of these notes; it is finding the duplicate. Accepting the daunting task, collectors Ed Zegers and Karol Winograd started a group in 2016 to hunt down and pair the duplicate notes. The first pair was discovered in 2019 and, since then, the group has matched several more pairs. The pair in this auction was reportedly matched up from notes found in Alaska and Germany.

The Stack’s Bowers sale also features other amazing PMG-certified offerings, including a rare silver certificate with an estimate of $700,000 to $900,000. To learn more about the rare note, click here.