Are Italian 2013 "S" 5€-bills rare?

[Tárrega]

As I was scrolling through the resent entries, I observed a rather severe absence amongst the Italian from the Europa-series. Only by looking at the Italian entries could I really find some. I've also just registered one so far.. Do you all agree or what do you think?

[lmviterbo]

S/S were issued in 2013, and they were rather common until 2018. Then, until two years ago, they were still not hard to find.

Even now, they're not rare: I alone have already registered 8 this year (and I'm in Portugal, the Eurozone country where the smallest percentage of S/S fivers was registered among total notes).

In total, around 660 million S/S notes were issued. More than 3 million were registered by EBTors.

Its geographical footprint, though, was not very spread out. This is more or less their typical distribution (image from EBTCheck's stats):




[edit: I had mistakenly written 220 million instead of 660 million]

[Tárrega]

Well, that explains the situation So they are indeed kinda rare, 220 million isn't too much when taking into consideration that there must be a billion French out there. And I don't think it can be harder to stumble upon them in Portugal than it is in a non-euro country like Denmark haha I've never seen one here, but soon I'll get a batch of fivers from my bank, so then we'll see if I have been lucky!
What do you think could be a possible explanation for such a small batch for such a big country as Italy? Like Greece is a much smaller county by economy, population etc. But Greek fivers are all over the place..

[lmviterbo]

Someone else might have a better answer than me, but here goes a simplified reasoning on what might explain the uneven distribution of banknotes from different printing works.

Every year, the notes that are about to be produced are auctioned (not sure if this is the correct term), and national banks in need of this or that denomination (face value) bid on the production of whatever printing works they want to bid on. If, for example, the Greek Euro printer marks a very good price for some production batch for some countries (this includes cost for distribution, security and so on), and maybe also competitive payment conditions and whatever, then those banknotes might end in very different and even very far countries.

I don't understand why the production and distribution costs are not more standardized. It seems to me that costs would be reduced overall if banknotes had to travel the least possible to begin with.

[Tárrega]

Very, very interesting. I very much appreciate that you took the time to explain it, it gives totally sense now So it's a system of pooling the denominations. It doesn't surprise me that there's business in even the field of printing money.. So Banca d'Italia hasn't come up with the best possible price and have just produced a small number of notes, primarily for the Italian market? These banknotes have then been diffused slowly around Europe.
I agree with you that every country should produce banknotes for themselves, just like with the coins. Finland e.g. could very well still produce notes for their demand. And that would be even more interesting for us EBT:ters with more combinations Time will tell if it's only going to be France and Germany printing the 2026 series.
Every European Union member country has their national sides on the euro coins, so every nation should have their own serial number as well - and use it! No matter if they actually print the notes themselves or outsource the task. Great topic to discuss about

[jazzdream]

As an incidental case:
I've inputed 111 477 and out of those 260 has an 'S0XXXX" so a percentage of 0.23% !!!!!

Granted, my are often brand new, so the figure is not really representative.

My 2 cents,
Jazzdream.

[Tárrega]

That's still not a lot!!

[vermeer]

S001A* = 1.894
S001B* =
S001C* =
S001D* =
S001E* =
S001F* =
S001G* =
S001H* =

The rest at a later date.

[g.s.51]

The 5€ S / S are not specially rar.
My estimations :
S001 : 168 millions
S002 : 204 millions
S003 : 83 millions
S004 and S005 are unknown
S006 : 165 millions

[g.s.51]

I'd like to change my estimates, which go back four years.
The latest data accumulated lead to the following estimates:
S001 : 178 millions
S002 : 196 millions
S003 : 74 millions
S006 : 190 millions
Only the printers know the exact quantity of each print run.

[MARIUS-FFB]

I entered:
S001 MD (4163)
S002 MD (1405)
S003 MD (980)
S006 MD (793)
The first one on 2013-05-30, the last one on 2025-04-27 (two days ago...)
Not so quite rare.
But if I observe the from -> N006 only 75x, N009 only 11x, N015 only 76x, N016 only 57x

[lmviterbo]

The latest data accumulated lead to the following estimates:
S001 : 178 millions
S002 : 196 millions
S003 : 74 millions
S006 : 190 millions
Only the printers know the exact quantity of each print run.

Of course, g.s.51 is right and I have no idea how I came up with the 220 million figure I wrote in my first answer.

Based on the huge EBTCheck database (over 775k S/S ), I arrived to very similar totals, except for S006, which, if I didn't make any mistake, could be updated.

S001: 182 millions
S002: 197 millions
S003: 73 millions
S006: 211 millions
total: close to 663 million S/S

So, as others have stated, these are by no means rare nor even uncommon.

[Tárrega]

Well.. Thank you for showing me the statistics! I can understand there is actually a lot of them, the interesting question for me is just why so few is submitted into the system on a daily basis compared to e.g. Greek or Portuguese I could easily go through the entries for S/S (only a few pages) when the entries for the M/M was practically endless.. So if there should be a lot of them out there, why is statistically so few registered compared to the other printers? Is there something I'm missing totally on or am I right?

[g.s.51]

The different sites where euronotes are registered for each print run do not generally correspond to an accurate estimate of the said print runs.
Each registration site complements another. It is this combination that leads to a relatively precise approach and calculation of a print run.

If I look at the very interesting EuroTracer site, the observation of the recordings does not correspond to the final mathematical reality, for example:

S001: 18629 notes registered on 01/05/2025 (178/182 millions estimated)

S002: 4254 notes (196/197 estimated)

S003: 2605 notes (73/74 estimated)

S004 and S005: unknown

S006: 4109 notes (211/215 millons estimated)
(An Miguel: According to Marty's excellent site, we can reach 215 million notes).

The last important piece of information that puts our calculations/estimates into perspective is that we don't know the number of faulty tickets (which can reduce the actual quantity of a print run)!

Guy Sohier

[g.s.51]

The different sites where euronotes are registered for each print run do not generally correspond to an accurate estimate of the said print runs.
Each registration site complements another. It is this combination that leads to a relatively precise approach and calculation of a print run.

If I look at the very interesting EuroTracer site, the observation of the recordings does not correspond to the final mathematical reality, for example:

S001: 18629 notes registered on 01/05/2025 (178/182 millions estimated)

S002: 4254 notes (196/197 estimated)

S003: 2605 notes (73/74 estimated)

S004 and S005: unknown

S006: 4109 notes (211/215 millons estimated)
(An Miguel: According to Marty's excellent site, we can reach 215 million notes).

The last important piece of information that puts our calculations/estimates into perspective is that we don't know the number of faulty notes (which can reduce the actual quantity of a print run)!

Guy Sohier