Party Like It's 1999

Darth Slurpee Mon Mar 09, 2020 8:21 pm

I went to Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago. In preparation, I tried to see what kind of bills I could get for myself while I was down there. I belong to a credit union that is part of a network of credit unions that lets me make withdrawals from affiliated credit unions. It turns out there were 94 of these on the island.

I do this because it's a way for me to use a whole lot of different financial institutions from which I get my dollars for this hobby, which gives me more variety in the hobby. For the most part, each source gets its own user note color scheme, of course gets its name listed in the "where from" part of my user note, and gets its own marking style. I do this because 1) I want people who get more than one of my bills to wonder why the other bills are marked differently, and 2) to not have people not hit subsequent bills of mine because they think they've already done so (which is more likely if all the bills are stamped the same). That's my imagination running free, and I'm sticking with it.

With that ambling preamble, I'm here to report something that I found absolutely amazing. I visited seven different credit unions (co-ops down there) and three banks, managing to procure 16 straps of singles. I'm going to ignore the 2017, 2013, and 2009 series bills and get on to the good stuff of the other series found in these straps.

2006 - 20
2003A - 5
2003 - 3
2001 - 2
1995 - 1

Now here's the part that has me completely baffled. Most of the straps look like they were FRB re-issued (based on the physical strap used). They made their way to nine different financial institutions from all over the island (north, south, east, and west). In addition to those 31 bills in the above five series, there were also 101 bills scattered among those 16 straps from series 1999. affraid

Here's the count for each of the 16 straps:

7 • 2 • 2 • 6 • 12 • 8 • 7 • 9 • 7 • 15 • 6 • 4 • 1 • 7 • 3 • 5

You might notice among those 16 numbers that there's not a zero among them. That's right. There wasn't a single strap bereft of 1999 series bills.

Help me out, here. The straps were perfectly normal except for these 1999 series bills. There's nothing about them that suggests that they were part of a collection that made it back into a bank as a deposit. They were of all conditions. They weren't clumped together within a strap. There was nothing tying any strap to any other strap. And it was every. single. strap. I was starting to believe that I could have spent a year there with more money than I'll ever have access to and every strap on that island would've had 1999 series bills in 'em. I'm befuddled, gobsmacked, and many other synonyms for freaked out by this.

I welcome any and all conspiracy theories as to how this happened. scratch

dctim Tue Mar 10, 2020 10:30 am

First, I saw that you were entering a bunch of bills from PR and you used the International Zip code for many. What's up with that?

I would suspect that there is not a lot of cash coming in or out of the 3,500 square miles of island. Once the FED got the cash into the Commonwealth, it probably stays there.

Darth Slurpee Wed Mar 11, 2020 6:26 pm

dctim wrote:First, I saw that you were entering a bunch of bills from PR and you used the International Zip code for many. What's up with that?…snip

Markus has it set up that entries for Puerto Rico come in as either international or domestic. I don't know why, and I don't (yet) know if other territories are set up similarly. As I was traveling the island, I did find that cities that were showing up on my GPS were listed on the international side but were obscured when entered as domestic.

It's the U.S.P.S. thing where a single ZIP code is represented by a single city name, but many cities are listed under it. It drives me a little bit crazy because I tend towards perfectionism, and I find it highly annoying our Secretary of State won't use the city I actually live in (the official address of my legal parcel ID) but defaults to what the U.S.P.S. chooses to use for the ZIP. It really slows me down at places that want to check my ID and see a different city name on my drivers license than on whatever form I've just filled out. My address city is 40 times the size of the city they use for the ZIP, but what can you do? And in Puerto Rico, I noticed there were many cities showing up under a single ZIP code, more than I've found most of the time looking at ZIPs in the 50 states.

So I found myself quickly gravitating to the side that let me put bills in more specifically than not.

Also, fully 40% of the hits from Puerto Rico for the site are listed as international hits, and that has been true of many of the hits I've already gotten from dollars spent there. Actually, the hits I've gotten so far are coming in very close to 50/50. Boricuas often go through the longer process here to list themselves as an international location rather than just their ZIP code. Maybe it's how they see themselves.

So I utilized both methods. At the end of the day, I suspect they're still going to show essentially the same mileage. I'm not sure where this would create any problems with the site since it's the way the site's set up. Ultimately, I just tried to cover both bases with my entries while favoring the internationally-designated entries.

Is there a particular problem you see with bills from Puerto Rico being entered as originating internationally?

dctim wrote:snip…I would suspect that there is not a lot of cash coming in or out of the 3,500 square miles of island. Once the FED got the cash into the Commonwealth, it probably stays there.

Okay, I can see that point, but it does raise a couple of questions.

First, isn't Puerto Rico served by a FED location within the 50 states? I've never heard that there was a FED center located on the island. And the majority were marked like they were FED-processed, but maybe it's that whoever is doing it on the island is marking their straps to look very much like a FED branch. Oh, and the straps all-in-all were comprised of a very high percentage of pretty decent looking bills, not ratty ones that look like they're trying to hold on 'til they turn to dust.

Second, I get that bills can stay in circulation in a certain geographic area without escaping. I live in Michigan. 75% of my hits come from Michigan. There's a gravitational force in play here that is tough to deal with, bounded as we are on three sides by either a Great Lake or foreign country making them harder to travel freely. And for those which do want to get out, who in their right mind would want to go through Toledo? tongue

But out of 1,600 bills, how are there only 5 2003A, 3 2003, 2 2001, 1 1995, but 101 from 1999? That's a crazy, crazy, crazy outlier. Every strap. Or how 'bout this? The only series that showed up in every strap were 2017, 2013, 2009, and 1999.

Not trying to be argumentative. Just discussing.

dctim Thu Mar 12, 2020 9:48 am

Darth Slurpee wrote:
dctim wrote:First, I saw that you were entering a bunch of bills from PR and you used the International Zip code for many. What's up with that?…snip
<snip> Is there a particular problem you see with bills from Puerto Rico being entered as originating internationally?

Nah, I have no problem, but I certainly find your user experience to be interesting. I hadn't considered that there would be such an experience, but I am very much a homebody in comparison.

dctim wrote:snip…I would suspect that there is not a lot of cash coming in or out of the 3,500 square miles of island. Once the FED got the cash into the Commonwealth, it probably stays there.
<snip> I've never heard that there was a FED center located on the island.<snip>

No, I would suspect that that there isn't a "location", per se. However, I have heard that the FRB New York serves the Caribbean territories, the Caribbean nations and most of Europe.

I'm actually glad to hear that the condition of the currency is at least average to the lower 48.

Geographically, my hit radius is basically 50 miles. I haven't done the analysis in awhile, but well above 75 % of my hits are within 50 miles of where I spend them. My bill hit experience from "that other place" from over 10 years ago confirms the local bias.

In regard to the preponderance of an older series across straps and locations ... I don't have much to say. It's been ages since I have been a strapper.

I appreciate the discussion.

Jack002 Fri May 08, 2020 5:45 pm

Seems all these 1999 bills were orphaned there. They came there and were spent and traded around all staying there.
Odd. I've not seen a 1999 in a long time

Darth Slurpee Fri Jun 19, 2020 6:33 pm

There's one more interesting aspect of these bills to report.

All of them are K…B bills. The lowest serial number begins with 70 and the highest with 81. That's a very tight range.

Now I'm thinking that at some point Puerto Rico got a large shipment of uncirculated bills since my collection has those data points. Then, those bills have continued to circulate on the island since then.

I still find it remarkable that every single strap I withdrew down there had at least one in them, but this theory seems to fit. Idea

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