$1 Star Notes
178 print runs · series 1999–2021 · 83 short
The $1 is the star note people actually find in their change, and the print record shows it: 178 runs reported since October 2002, more than any denomination except the $100. Most of those runs are enormous. Eighty-three of them are not, and that is the whole game.
What the print record holds for $1 star notes
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has reported 178 $1 star note runs since October 2002, across ten series and all twelve Federal Reserve Banks. Eighty-three were short runs of 640,000 notes or fewer. The smallest was 25,000 notes: Series 2017, Boston, reported in November 2019.
- Print runs
- 178
- Short runs
- 83
- Smallest run
- 25,000
- Largest run
- 9,600,000
- Notes printed
- 371,551,000
- Reported
- October 2002 – May 2026
That 25,000-note run is 384 times smaller than the biggest $1 star run in the record, and both were printed within a few years of each other. Run size on the $1 has almost nothing to do with the year and almost everything to do with how much spoilage a particular bank’s order happened to produce.
The shortest $1 star runs on record
| Notes printed | Series | Prefix | Federal Reserve Bank | Serial range | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25,000 | 2017 | A | Boston | 6,400,001–6,425,000 | November 2019 |
| 32,000 | 2009 | B | New York | 6,400,001–6,432,000 | June 2012 |
| 80,000 | 2013 | L | San Francisco | 1–80,000 | January 2015 |
| 100,000 | 2013 | F | Atlanta | 9,600,001–9,700,000 | August 2016 |
| 160,000 | 2003 | E | Richmond | 6,400,001–6,560,000 | January 2005 |
| 160,000 | 2009 | B | New York | 12,800,001–12,960,000 | December 2013 |
| 250,000 | 2013 | F | Atlanta | 6,400,001–6,650,000 | June 2015 |
| 250,000 | 2013 | E | Richmond | 3,200,001–3,450,000 | August 2016 |
Notice how far apart the top of this table and the bottom of the next one sit. A $1 star note from a 25,000-note run and a $1 star note from a 9,600,000-note run are the same object to a cashier and completely different objects to a collector.
No dollar figure here, and that is deliberate. Run size tells you how many notes exist. What a note is worth depends on its condition, and two notes from the same run can be an order of magnitude apart. Anyone who quotes you a price from a serial number alone is guessing. Use these numbers to know what you have, then have it graded before you believe a figure.
Series by series
| Series | Runs | Short runs | Smallest run | Notes printed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 2 | 1 | 640,000 | 7,040,000 |
| 2001 | 9 | 3 | 640,000 | 21,120,000 |
| 2003 | 17 | 7 | 160,000 | 36,320,000 |
| 2003A | 18 | 10 | 320,000 | 30,112,000 |
| 2006 | 16 | 7 | 640,000 | 36,352,000 |
| 2009 | 18 | 11 | 32,000 | 24,832,000 |
| 2013 | 23 | 8 | 80,000 | 81,930,000 |
| 2017 | 22 | 7 | 25,000 | 49,545,000 |
| 2017A | 23 | 12 | 250,000 | 36,580,000 |
| 2021 | 30 | 17 | 250,000 | 47,720,000 |
Which Federal Reserve Bank issued them
| District | Federal Reserve Bank | Runs | Short runs | Smallest run |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Atlanta | 29 | 12 | 100,000 |
| 2 | New York | 29 | 13 | 32,000 |
| 7 | Chicago | 23 | 10 | 250,000 |
| 12 | San Francisco | 19 | 7 | 80,000 |
| 11 | Dallas | 17 | 8 | 250,000 |
| 1 | Boston | 15 | 6 | 25,000 |
| 5 | Richmond | 13 | 7 | 160,000 |
| 4 | Cleveland | 9 | 5 | 250,000 |
| 10 | Kansas City | 9 | 6 | 250,000 |
| 9 | Minneapolis | 5 | 5 | 250,000 |
| 3 | Philadelphia | 5 | 2 | 320,000 |
| 8 | St. Louis | 5 | 2 | 500,000 |
The district letter in your serial number is the bank that issued the note, not the city it was printed in. All twelve districts appear in the $1 star record.
How to read a run size
A star run of more than 640,000 notes is ordinary. At 640,000 or fewer the note starts to be scarce, and the further below, the scarcer. On the $1 the record breaks down like this:
- 95 ordinary runs (more than 640,000 notes)
- 77 short runs (640,000 down to 160,001)
- 2 very short runs (160,000 down to 100,001)
- 4 exceptional runs (100,000 or fewer)
The single most common $1 star run size is 3,200,000 notes, which the BEP has reported 73 times. If your run comes back at that figure, you have a perfectly normal star note — which is what most star notes are.
Why the series year is not optional on the $1
On the $1, a serial number on its own can be ambiguous. Serial L 12800001★ falls inside two different San Francisco runs: a 6,400,000-note run of Series 1999 reported in October 2002, and a 3,200,000-note run of Series 2013 reported in July 2017. Both are ordinary runs, so nothing is riding on it in this particular case — but the eight digits did not decide which run it was. The series year printed on the face of the note did.
This is why the lookup asks you for the series when the serial alone lands in more than one run, instead of picking the more interesting answer. Picking one would be inventing.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is counted from the Monthly Production Reports of the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing — 284 reports covering October 2002 to May 2026, parsed into 684 rows and deduplicated to 678 star note runs, of which 178 are $1. Works of the US federal government carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. §105. Nothing here comes from a dealer’s price list. The parsing, the checks and the known gaps are written up in the methodology.
Records start in October 2002. A $1 star note older than that cannot be looked up here — that is a gap in the public record, not a fault in your note.
Other denominations: $2 · $5 · $10 · $20 · $50 · $100. Each one has its own run table and its own lookup.
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