$20 Star Notes

130 print runs · series 1999–2017A · 67 short

The $20 is the third most printed star denomination in the record — 130 runs since October 2002, behind the $100 and the $1 — and the most uneventful of the seven. It is the only denomination with no run in the exceptional band at all.

Star note lookup

Star Note Serial Number Lookup

Type the serial number and find out how many notes were printed in that run — straight from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s own monthly reports.

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Serial number Spaces or no spaces, star or no star, upper or lower case — all fine. Example: MB 12345678 ★ or l12800001*

Denomination The serial prefix alone does not say which bill it is — the same letters exist on several.

My star notes

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This is a print run size, not a price. We can tell you how many notes the BEP printed in your note’s run because they published the figure. What a note sells for depends on its condition, on demand for that district and series, and on what a buyer will pay today — none of which is in this data, and none of which we will pretend to know. Collectors treat runs of 640,000 notes or fewer as “short runs”: that threshold is collector convention, not an official BEP category.

Run figures come from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing monthly production reports. Each result links to the exact PDF the figure was read from, so you can check it yourself.

What the print record holds for $20 star notes

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has reported 130 $20 star note runs since October 2002, across nine series and all twelve Federal Reserve Banks. Sixty-seven were short runs of 640,000 notes or fewer. The smallest was 128,000 notes.

Print runs: 130
Short runs: 67
Smallest run: 128,000
Largest run: 6,400,000
Notes printed: 229,984,000
Reported: November 2002 – October 2024

Half the $20 star runs are short and none is tiny. For a denomination this heavily printed that is what you would expect: big orders spoil in proportion, and the replacement runs come out mid-sized.

The shortest $20 star runs on record

Notes printed	Series	Prefix	Federal Reserve Bank	Serial range	Reported
128,000	2006	`IL`	San Francisco	1–128,000	July 2009
160,000	2017	`ND`	Cleveland	1–160,000	December 2018
160,000	2017A	`PF`	Atlanta	6,400,001–6,560,000	November 2020
160,000	2017A	`PF`	Atlanta	12,800,001–12,960,000	April 2021
320,000	2004	`EA`	Boston	1–320,000	September 2003
320,000	2004	`EC`	Philadelphia	3,200,001–3,520,000	September 2003
320,000	2004	`EC`	Philadelphia	6,400,001–6,720,000	April 2004
320,000	2004	`EA`	Boston	3,200,001–3,520,000	October 2004

The floor here is a single run of 128,000 notes — Series 2006, San Francisco, reported in July 2009. The next size up is 160,000, and there are three of those.

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	1	0	3,200,000	3,200,000
2001	3	0	3,200,000	9,600,000
2004	20	10	320,000	36,480,000
2004A	6	2	320,000	11,968,000
2006	13	4	128,000	26,304,000
2009	15	9	320,000	24,672,000
2013	17	10	320,000	26,560,000
2017	16	7	160,000	37,920,000
2017A	39	25	160,000	53,280,000

Which Federal Reserve Bank issued them

District	Federal Reserve Bank	Runs	Short runs	Smallest run
6	Atlanta	24	12	160,000
12	San Francisco	20	10	128,000
7	Chicago	17	10	320,000
11	Dallas	13	5	384,000
2	New York	12	8	320,000
5	Richmond	12	4	320,000
1	Boston	10	5	320,000
10	Kansas City	7	4	320,000
3	Philadelphia	7	3	320,000
4	Cleveland	5	4	160,000
8	St. Louis	2	1	320,000
9	Minneapolis	1	1	320,000

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 $20 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 $20 the record breaks down like this:

63 ordinary runs (more than 640,000 notes)
63 short runs (640,000 down to 160,001)
4 very short runs (160,000 down to 100,001)
0 exceptional runs (100,000 or fewer)

The single most common $20 star run size is 3,200,000 notes, which the BEP has reported 53 times. If your run comes back at that figure, you have a perfectly normal star note — which is what most star notes are.

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 130 are $20. 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 $20 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: $1 · $2 · $5 · $10 · $50 · $100. Each one has its own run table and its own lookup.

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