I wouldn't doubt the Ingrams erased any trace of them. some of the bands could of been stuck to the fragments.

You would expect to see some sort of trace, a line where the band protected the bill underneath. what caused the piece to flip over in the first place?

Several places show the back side of a bill in my photo..3 spots.

I have similar thoughts about straps paper - a lot wider than rubber bands! No trace of protected areas the same dimension as paper straps. Moreover, where straps double there is double thickness protection.   And straps will not squirm to a new position as easily as bands ...

 
with the enhanced checking of serial numbers, I'm getting a FBI typo on the very first page.

It's very depressing. I'm going to have to maintain a list of FBI obvious typos

Even more depressing is that check six says this is a valid cooper serial.

Since "fixing" a typo is a guess, there's potentially wrong guesses.
we'll never really be sure what an accurate 100% list is.

The first FBI mistake is
B17745050D 1963A

It shows up on the first page of the fbi hoover list as

B17 745 050D

But the D at the end is wrong. 1963A series from the B reserve only had A at the end.
D is especially wrong

A few reserves had A and B runs (last char), but no one in 1963A had D runs.

The typo is bad. It can't be a B. It could be an A, but maybe it could be a B if there was also a typo in the reserve (first) letter.

I'm going to have to assume it should be an A

and the typo isn't in the 63A. all the 63 series fed reserves had all bills end in A.

I have the best reference (according to collectors) on serials and printings, according to collectors (mentioned above).. The serials.pdf I referenced above is from the site you mention ,and has the same data from the same author, in 2008.

He notes there is some issue with whether certain serials were printed as 1963 series or 1963a. I've found in most cases he is very correct.

I believe using his serial ranges, I've identified two other outlier serials that don't seem legit (in terms of being printed) and are likely FBI typos. But I'm allowing those, since they are singles that are clearly printed in the FBI memo.

I think the fbi pages may have been created from a computer, like a COBOL program. the serials may have been typed on a keypunch machine,  (EDIT: now that I think about it, it's more likely they were typed on a terminal device similar to what they were printed on.  ...but it could have been keypunch entry still at the FBI by then (1971).....)

and then computer sorted, and then printed using a line printer or maybe a ibm selectric typewriter that would be driven by the computer...basically those used a ball and acted just like an electric typewriter in the '70s. I had used one like that as my main interface to an IBM 370 in college. I used to type my school papers with a formatting program back then, and then print them out. The paper had holes on the side and was a long bifolded continuous feed, but you could tear off at perforations, so you had 8-1/2" x 11" results. 

the key thing was that it had a ball like the IBM Selectric, so it looked like it was done by a normal electric typewriter.

It may have been like this IBM 2741 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
But I think the one we had was smaller and more compact.

The IBM 2741 is a printing computer terminal that was introduced in 1965.[1] Compared to the teletypewriter machines that were commonly used as printing terminals at the time, the 2741 offers 50% higher speed, much higher quality printing, quieter operation, interchangeable type fonts, and both upper and lower case letters.


Design
The IBM 2741 combines a ruggedized Selectric typewriter mechanism with IBM SLT electronics and an RS-232-C serial interface. It operates at about 14.1 characters per second with a data rate of 134.5 bits/second (one start bit, six data bits, an odd parity bit, and one and a half stop bits). In contrast to serial terminals employing ASCII code, the most significant data bit of each character is sent first. As with the standard office Selectrics of the day, there were 88 printing characters (not quite enough for the entire EBCDIC or ASCII printing character set including the lower case alphabet) plus space and a few nonprinting control codes, more than can be represented with six data bits, so shift characters are used to allow the machine's entire character set to be used.

The machine was packaged into its own small desk, giving the appearance of square tabletop with a Selectric typewriter partly sunken into the surface, with the electronics in a vertically oriented chassis at the rear. It supplanted the earlier IBM 1050, which was more expensive and cumbersome, in remote terminal applications. The IBM 1050 and its variations were designed for a higher duty cycle and so were frequently used as console devices for computers such as the IBM 1130 and IBM System/360. By contrast, the 2741 was primarily focused on remote terminal applications.



In contrast, the Decwriter terminals used dot-matrix technology and didn't look like a typewriter printed

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I'm fairly confident the ibm list is result of a computer, because of the sort and formatting

the sort order is down the first group, then up to the top of the 2nd group and down, and then repeat for 3rd, 4th, group.

sort order can be tricky because of mixed numbers and letters. The sort order includes the entire serial including the series year if necessary.

so far, I've found no errors in sort order. The sort actually follows the same number vs letter precedence as modern day unix sort (i can just use the unix command line sort and it creates the same sort order)

I think if humans manually sorted, there might be some sort errors....plus it's just inconceivable to imagine a manual process, assuming the microfiche was randomly ordered.

the microfiche could not have automatically fed numbers to the computer. the technology just wasn't commonly available (if at all?) to do OCR like that reliably, then. So there was a manual step from microfiche to computer, I believe.

But typists at FBI would have been very skilled back then. They were trained for very low error rates.

note sure if any automated checking of the data entry would have been possible for them to do. For instance only limited "valid serial" checking might have been done by the computer program (not the range dependent knowledge I have )

What old software and hardware would have been involved? Snowball, PL1, .......... IBM main frame ? Probably a standard govt system. 

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I'm fairly confident the ibm list is result of a computer, because of the sort and formatting

the sort order is down the first group, then up to the top of the 2nd group and down, and then repeat for 3rd, 4th, group.

sort order can be tricky because of mixed numbers and letters. The sort order includes the entire serial including the series year if necessary.

so far, I've found no errors in sort order. The sort actually follows the same number vs letter precedence as modern day unix sort (i can just use the unix command line sort and it creates the same sort order)

I think if humans manually sorted, there might be some sort errors....plus it's just inconceivable to imagine a manual process, assuming the microfiche was randomly ordered.

the microfiche could not have automatically fed numbers to the computer. the technology just wasn't commonly available (if at all?) to do OCR like that reliably, then. So there was a manual step from microfiche to computer, I believe.

But typists at FBI would have been very skilled back then. They were trained for very low error rates.

note sure if any automated checking of the data entry would have been possible for them to do. For instance only limited "valid serial" checking might have been done by the computer program (not the range dependent knowledge I have )

What old software and hardware would have been involved? Snowball, PL1, .......... IBM main frame ? Probably a standard govt system.

In the late 1960s, I was an aeronautical engineer at what was probably the most elite aeronautical research organization in DOD and the world.  When I started there, we only had access to a couple of IBM 7090 series machines.  It took a week or two to get even a simple tape reproduced (remember reels of tapes?).  In other words, we did not have any significant in-house computer capability.  But about 1968 or 1969, a CDC 6600 arrived and from that point every engineer had a computer ID number and basically served that machine.  I was involved with some programs that required 3 to 5 hours run time on the CDC 6600 and which could be run only at very late night or on weekends.  Guess who was a frequent visitor to the computer facility at midnight and on weekends?

My guess would be that the FBI had access to something like an IBM 360 in 1971.       

I'm about 1/3rd of the way thru my list

Here's the current list of curious "end in D" errors in the FBI list.
check six says these all are cooper serials, because they are clear in the FBI hoover list, saying end in D
But for 1963A series year, at those reserves, there were no serial runs that ended in D.

I'm assuming all of these should end in A. These are not the only issues, as I've been noting.
but this is a repeated D error on different serials. It's curious.

ASDF on the keyboard has A and D on left hand separated by two fingers. Maybe it was a repeated keystroke error that was not caught by visual confirmation at the FBI


# No D's in B or L district for 1963A series. make it an A run only
You can plug these into check six or visually confirm yourself on the FBI images

B17745050D 1963A
L26672287D 1963A
L27108703D 1963A
L27143052D 1963A
L29580707D 1963A
L35534904D 1963A

many of those are on a single page. I was imagining the typist back then. Maybe there were multiple typists, each with different error rates. Or someone got tired as the typing went on. I can really feel for the people who did visual confirmation. Can drive you crazy.


I'll summarize all the FBI "wrong serial" issues at the end of this, and what I decided to use as a best guess.

Here's some trivia on the variances between the  year series: (1934 and 1950 have their own trivia, but not as many of those bills)

Trivia on 63 series
first issue of $20 notes to be printed in 32-subject format, and
first with the motto "In God We Trust" on the back. (maybe good to have when you're jumping out of a plane!!)

Trivia on 69 series
first with the new treasury seal


32 subject format is I believe a 32-Subject sheet. i.e. 32 bills per printed sheet. 4 columns, 8 rows
I suspect knowledge of subject per year series, could be used to deduce the other bills printed on the same sheet as a cooper bill.

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Going to break new ground here in the staid cooper currency vortex.

It is commonly accepted that these are the year series in the cooper ransom
 ["34", "50", "50A", "50B", "50C",  "63", "63A", "69"]

there around eighteen 50C notes. Not done counting.
In any case, the astute observer might wonder "Why no 50D notes". Those were issued before the 63 series. Interestingly there were also 50E notes issued, that are also not in the cooper sample, as documented by FBI.

looking at when 50D and 50E were delivered to banks, one might think they should be included, just given randomness. But so far, they're not.

SERIES 1950E $20
Signatures: Granahan-Fowler. Delivered September 1965 through July 1966.

SERIES 1950D $20
Signatures: Granahan-Dillon. Delivered February 1963 through November 1965.

[cue the Vortex background music]

However in the bills I've analyzed so far, there are two 50C notes that end with a D in their serial.

That should be illegal, since there was no D run for the district of the serials (L) in 50C series year.

A D run did occur in 50D series year though for the L district. and it spanned serials L00000001D thru L21600000D
so that covers the two serials below. I think a single error in 50C to 50D is more likely, than the multiple errors needed to make a 50C legit serial. L 50C C run only went from 00000001 to 06840000

Simply put: the serials as printed by FBI are not possible. So what would be a good guess for what they should be?

I'm thinking these two are typos and really should be 50D series. This adds one more series year to the cooper sample..i.e. 50D

I'm sure this will lead to countless arguments and accusations. But I will stand my ground


The visual inspection clearly has a D at the end in both cases
 
L16837849D 50C   page 170 row 45 (I suggest series year 50D instead)
L15257770D 50C   page 170 row 47 (I suggest series year 50D instead)

reference for the print runs showing no L D run in 50C series year is on page 147 of serials.pdf


This will all be covered in my screenplay. One of the characters throws a beer bottle through a window when this is discovered.


EDIT: Note that C and D are typed with the same left middle finger. The C is 1 down from the home position though. D is the home position for the left middle finger. Could explain a typo.