| 2004 Rs50 Note prefix K/242 The 1000000 serial shows a less clear strike (less force?) with ink missing from most digits of the prefix and serial number |
| 2006 Rs2000 Note prefix P/65 The Rs2000 was the first time the Serial Number was printed with an increasing font size of digits. The last digit 0 of 1000000 serial is misaligned and of the same size of the previous digit 0. |
| 2015 Rs1000 Note prefix S/205 Another example of the Serial Number printed with an increasing font size of digits. However the extra First digit 1 is larger than the next 0. |
Rezwan Razack (IBNS) of
Indian Paper Money Museum said
It's possible that the DeLaRue printing facility used a specialized
technique or equipment to add the extra digit for issue note.
In general the extra digit might be added through:
Richard Perera (IBNS) who had worked at DeLaRue said:
It looks like less ink to me, rather than less force,
necessarily. However, as the 1M S/N (ie 7 digits is the exception),
it could have been made on a manual platter letterpress
machine. Probably rather old, as seen for much commercial letterpress
these days like shown on right.
The Malta and SriLanka plants had several of these machines, all used for
replacement notes or for exceptional overprints if the note was being
made for commemorative purposes (standard note with an additional
overprinted shield or such) and for marking specimen notes.
Printing goes by the requirements of the country. Some allow star
notes or additional numbers and some require a fixed range with
consecutive Serials to be delivered.
Sometime after 2015 DeLaRue started using a Replacement note for the 1000000 note. From 2017, when they stopped the use of replacements, and CBSL accepted bundles with non-consecutive Serials the 10000000 note was nolonger needed.
Although DeLaRue always used a different prefix for all Ceylon and Sri Lanka replacements notes, DeLaRue did do proper replacements for other countries that insisted on it like when Ceylon and Sri Lanka notes were printed by Bradbury Wilkinson & Co. If we study the printing of those Serials we may find a few which were printed by letterpress.
If we identify misaligned Serial numbers on notes they maybe, those poorly printed by letterpress to replace damaged notes when a different replacement prefix was not used. For exanple notes printed by Bradbury Wilkinson & Co.
If anyone has such a Ceylon or Sri Lanka pair of notes or even just the note with 1000000 it will be very useful to scan the same way to investigate how the process of printing the 1000000th note changed with time and when they stopped. Please contact me at kavanr @ gmail.com and contribute high-resolution images.
I thank those who contributed to this discussion, and welcome more
comments.
I also thank Wassim Sattar for allowing me to to scan at 1200 dpi
the 2004 Rs50 pair of notes and Chanaka Sampath for contributing
images of 4 pairs of notes from their personal collections.