Stamped notes

[Olivier]

BTW: I would like to have a gallery of interesting looking notes at ETB

That's a good idea! Many banknotes have funny marks on it. Then we can speculate about what it meansm, where it was put on the note etc. etc.

Yes, good idea!!

[bhoeyb]

For all who doesn't know a 'lias', here a picture.
It's the paper around the bundle of notes .

[Bobtail]

Today I got an Irish 50 euro note that had been stamped:

It's definitely "group", but the upper text is too messy to read. "Widows Group", maybe? Well, perhaps not, because the first letter looks like "M". Has anyone seen something like this before?

[Yannn]

Hmmm, that thread gives me an opportunity to fuel the old one about marking the notes we enter in EBT

This shows that in spite of what some people fear, marked bills are not so quickly removed from circulation.

Some users of http://www.wheresgeorge.com use rubber stamps to mark the notes they entered with the web address of the site. Even if the responsibles of the site are very careful about that, highlighting that any modification made on a note which makes it unfit for re-use is illegal.
In the opinion of the rubber stamp users, it doesn't make the note unfit for use.
Though, such rubber stamps are not sold anymore on their web site.

A few comparisons between EBT and where's george ?

Number of notes entered : EBT = 3,060,000 WG = 48,600,000
Users : EBT = 31,000 WG = 2,500,000
Hit ratio : EBT = 0,2 % WG = 9,8 %
Hit record on a note : EBT = 3 WG = 14

That means that, in average, on WG, you get 1 hit every 10 notes entered ! As the proportion of notes entered in the US circulating notes is 0,04% "only", that mean that the hit ratio is boosted by something. Probably by marking bills.

I think that in EBT deserts like France or Spain, new users get quickly bored with entering notes that will anyway never get a hit, and give up, preventing those countries to reach a 'critical mass' where the probability of hits makes the game funnier and get people interested.

I'm wondering about getting an EBT rubber stamp!

[Elmo]

One day I received 7 €20 bills from an ATM with the same stamp on the
same place!

And today I entered my latest hit. The P of the upper-right serial number
had a circle around it! Therefore I had the feeling this bill would become a hit,
and it became one!

Still I would be careful with marking bills, some countries are quite 'relaxed'
(like Italy, Spain and Belgium), while others are very stringent (like Germany
and Finland).

[bhoeyb]

That means that, in average, on WG, you get 1 hit every 10 notes entered ! As the proportion of notes entered in the US circulating notes is 0,04% "only", that mean that the hit ratio is boosted by something. Probably by marking bills.

Do they have a moderation system for deleting 'interesting' hits?

[Yannn]

One day I received 7 €20 bills from an ATM with the same stamp on the
same place!

What did the stamp say ?

Still I would be careful with marking bills, some countries are quite 'relaxed'
(like Italy, Spain and Belgium), while others are very stringent (like Germany
and Finland).

Yes... That's right I've rarely seen notes with something on them in France. A few with some numbers or small spots on them, nothing more... But anyway, I think it would bring more users in EBT deserts even if the life of marked notes is shorter.

[Lou Crazy]

I have a rubber stamp which says "Per favore registra questa banconota su www.eurobilltracker.com", which means "please enter this note on www.eurobilltracker.com".

I stamped about 400 of the 1000 notes I entered. I got 4 hits thanks to my stamp :-)

So I suppose that stamping notes helps... now I only wish all these people kept entering notes :-(

[Viperazzi]

I have a rubber stamp which says "Per favore registra questa banconota su www.eurobilltracker.com", which means "please enter this note on www.eurobilltracker.com".

I stamped about 400 of the 1000 notes I entered. I got 4 hits thanks to my stamp

So I suppose that stamping notes helps... now I only wish all these people kept entering notes

Yup, that sure is good for recruiting people, but it will surely ensure you won't get triples with those notes! But if you enter a lot of notes and put the stamp on every second note, preferably the ones that are softened and/or wrinkled, you'll still have a lot of good notes left. I think that there should be just something more to make people stay at this site, most new users just enter a note and leave forever...

[Klazu]

That means that, in average, on WG, you get 1 hit every 10 notes entered ! As the proportion of notes entered in the US circulating notes is 0,04% "only", that mean that the hit ratio is boosted by something. Probably by marking bills.

Do they have a moderation system for deleting 'interesting' hits?

I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that they don't have one. That's why there's several hits with between over 10 users. Thay might be all fake ones. This (moderation) is why EBT rules!

[Lou Crazy]

I have a rubber stamp which says "Per favore registra questa banconota su www.eurobilltracker.com", which means "please enter this note on www.eurobilltracker.com".

I stamped about 400 of the 1000 notes I entered. I got 4 hits thanks to my stamp

So I suppose that stamping notes helps... now I only wish all these people kept entering notes

Yup, that sure is good for recruiting people, but it will surely ensure you won't get triples with those notes!

I believed so, too, but actually I had hits on those notes MONTHS after I circulated them!

But if you enter a lot of notes and put the stamp on every second note, preferably the ones that are softened and/or wrinkled, you'll still have a lot of good notes left.

That's what I do. If you read, I only stamped about 40% of my notes (maybe less)
And I chose the old ones, and I avoided stamping high-denomination ones, because they're the ones most likely to be brought to a bank.

I think that there should be just something more to make people stay at this site, most new users just enter a note and leave forever...

True


Maybe *one* reminder to users some time after they register could be useful. Just one, and no more.

[bhoeyb]

Because Italy is very tolerant with stamped / written notes, I think a www.eurobilltracker.com stamp it doesn't hurt that much in Italy. But don't expect a Italian - Finnish hit .

[Lou Crazy]

That means that, in average, on WG, you get 1 hit every 10 notes entered ! As the proportion of notes entered in the US circulating notes is 0,04% "only", that mean that the hit ratio is boosted by something. Probably by marking bills.

Do they have a moderation system for deleting 'interesting' hits?

I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that they don't have one. That's why there's several hits with between over 10 users. Thay might be all fake ones. This (moderation) is why EBT rules!

In their User Guidelines they say that they can moderate fake-looking hits.

I think they have more hits both because more users stamp their bills and because they have been around for a lot of time, so they have a larger base of bills entered.
Remember that if you double the number of bills you record, you quadruple the hit probability.
Anyway, even if we didn't take into account moderation, EBT has 6855 hits (moderated and un-moderated) out of 3076779 notes entered, i.e. one hit every 500 notes.
There are thought to be 8816 million euro bank notes in circulation, i.e. we have about 0.034% of them. Where did the 0.04% for Where's George come from?

Since they have 48 million notes entered, I would have thought their penetration to be higher.
Anyway, 48 million notes is a high number... I hope we'll reach them sometimes

[Yannn]

There are thought to be 8816 million euro bank notes in circulation, i.e. we have about 0.034% of them. Where did the 0.04% for Where's George come from?

From here :

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/wrapper.php ... itesummary

[Lou Crazy]

There are thought to be 8816 million euro bank notes in circulation, i.e. we have about 0.034% of them. Where did the 0.04% for Where's George come from?

From here :

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/wrapper.php ... itesummary

I see. Maybe we should take into account that the dollar is "very old". If you see how many dollar bills are printed each day and how many are entered, you see that it's about 0.15%
Newer bills have a higher chance of being entered in the system (instead of being amassed somewhere, maybe outside the USA).

Given enough time, the Euro will reach a position comparable to the US Dollar, probably. For now, all euro notes are new, and few of them are stashed somewhere else.

Moreover, on Where's George they have so many hits that there is no point in faking double, triple or quadruple hits!
They'd be boring anyway.

A good fake would have involve at least 8 sightings. You'd have to prepare carefully all of them, and that takes time.

Again, given time, we'll reach the same situation. There will be no point in moderating simple hits, especially same-country ones, because they'll be too boring to fake!