Euro notes
A little while ago, @kerrislravenhill mentioned in a chat that there's a whole market with bank notes that have certain serial numbers and could be worth more than the value on the note. While I already dropped all my change in a box, for a first quick inspection after returning home, and some stay in there for later research, just to be sure I don't miss any valuable pieces of spare chance, I never checked the bank notes.
In fact, I totally forgot how cool some bank notes actually are. I'm not really speaking about our Euro notes in this case, but referring to the Dutch ones I found online recently and remembered what a bummer it was at the time when we had to change our "pretty nice looking" Gulden bank notes for the new Euro notes. I was not that impressed.
Finding information
A new thing to focus on was born when I read that, but at the time I had no bank notes at hand. A few days ago, I needed to pay our daughter's tutor and we also went to the flea market so some cash at hand is needed, in case we find something. I decided to check the bank notes later at home and see if there are websites that help you to decide if the notes can be valuable.
As with the whole silver collecting and stacking journey, this is another rabbit hole to dive into and I was a bit overwhelmed on where to start. Until I decided to just pick the website that seemed to have the option to look the serial numbers up and had values pop up and check them there. I'm in no way sure if this information is even close to the reality and if I'm on to something, but I would like to share with you what my first round of digging brought up a few days ago.
Account registration for more features
To be able to see more of the website's functions, I registered and received an email where they mentioned that there's a three day discovery period and after that you can pay for extra functions. I can't see how paying 7,50 euros for a month would be profitable unless you manage a lot of cash notes.
BUT there's also a note that this person is there to help for further questions and therefore I'm going to make sure to rate a few of my notes to see if I indeed understood the state they're in correctly. It's a bit much to grab my head around with all this info. Maybe I'm totally wrong but below you can find the first three 20 Euro notes I checked on the website.
Checking the first 20 Euro note
Here's a screenshot of the first note I looked up:
A 20 Euro note from France
My guess is, that my note falls under the category below:
- 6/10 - VF ( Very Fine ) - SUP ( Superior )
A note that has not been circulated much with its original crunchiness.
Several faint vertical and horizontal folds.
rounded corners.
Small cuts on the edges.
This meant the bill was not worth more than the 20 euros because even a higher graded one was not showing a higher price. Again, I'm just using this website for the first time and wanted to collect some information for a next search another day, and hopefully using some other site that could confirm the information (or debunk it lol).
The second 20 Euro note
Let's see if I have more luck with the second 20 Euro note:
Another 20 Euro note from France
Again I felt that this note felt under this category:
- 6/10 - VF ( Very Fine ) - SUP ( Superior )
A note that has not been circulated much with its original crunchiness.
Several faint vertical and horizontal folds.
rounded corners.
Small cuts on the edges.
Here it also meant the value was the same as the 20 euros, great, another bill that I can spend! But come on, it would be nice to find at least one that's worth a little more, or possibly needs a bit more research to find out if these values mentioned here are true or not and mostly, why.
The third 20 Euro note
This one could be interesting as it could be 10% more value if I understand the valuation correctly, which is something I should dig into a little further. I'm pretty sure about the previous two ones that they are the 6/10 - VF level at the most and this means there will (according to this site) no higher value so I'm willing to risk spending these lol.
This is a 20 Euro note from the bank of Portugal
Now if you look at the valuation below this note though:
It's just a little above the regular value IF it's correct but as I can pick which notes I spend today and push a few aside, I will put this one aside until further investigation is done because I surely can't trust this one website alone. What I noticed later is that the lower graded ones also start at 22 Euro value:
I wonder if this is based on a serial number or only the state that the note is in. I definitely lean more towards when it has a special serial number, but so far I have not been able to find that information or found time to contact the owner of the site.
The last one
As this 20 Euro note also comes from Portugal, I was at least curious to find out if it was also showing a little higher evaluation than the ones from France.
Here we have another 20 Euro note from Portugal
I'd rate this one the same as those above, but funnily enough, as with the previous note from Portugal, even the lower graded ones are worth 10% more:
Findings
What I find funny is that I didn't have any note where the imprinted code is in the star:
The notes I have all have that number printed as you can see in the right example. Sadly this also means I can't see if this would higher the possibility of finding one with a higher value. Of course this could be because I only had a few notes of 20 Euros to check at once.
I'm wondering why the Portugal notes are worth more according to this site, so I need to dig into this, I'm not spending them for now as it could be easy money (if I find a buyer) if every note ends up being worth 10% more. I'm going to see how much info I can get out of the website owner because I don't particularly enjoy navigating this one and I'm also afraid that the option to look up note values will disappear after a few days, but let's see.
Too good to be true...
It definitely seems too good to be true that these notes would be worth 10% more without a special serial number but hey, I have to start my research somewhere and collect the information to learn more about the topic. This was just the first search. It's an interesting topic to say the least and it's definitely made me curious.
I know for a fact that next time that we're on the flea market, I will see if these sellers have Euro notes in there and what they ask for them, and trying to figure out if those all have special serial numbers or not. I could learn a thing from seeing what they're doing there..
In the end, I don't mind learning new things, it's all part of the journey and the worst thing that could happen here is that I don't have to keep the notes aside but will clear them for spending.. :)
Any tips to dive a little deeper into the topic on Euro notes (that's closest to home after all) can be left in the comment section and will be appreciated <3
All images above are screenshots taken from this website after looking up the banknotes.
Header image is created with Canva Pro.