The production methods employed in the printing and numbering of Irish Legal Tender Notes lead to the periodic creation of scarce and rare dates. This also lead to the creation of the rare displaced Code Variety among 10 Shilling and One Pound war code notes.
Displaced Codes are a result of the 10 Shilling and £1 war code notes being printed in batches using two code letters at a time, with the exception of the first print run of six million Currency Commission 10 Shilling notes which were all printed under the first used code, H. Thus, the codes should be considered in pairs when being examined: 10 Shilling: H, KJ, LM, RE; One Pound: TB, PV, GY, EF, see Table 1.
The existence of these Displaced Code notes is due to the stand-by blank replacement note system in use at the time whereby a stock of blank notes was kept aside for use as replacement notes, and the remainder of these left over extra notes (good overs) being printed with the last date at the end of a printing batch. Other factors may also apply.
The last date of each print order uses up the good overs of that order, and is generally a low printage and a rare date as a result.
Certain specific dates of Ten Shilling and One Pound notes occur with either of two codes on them, the normal expected code for that particular date, and the code used previously to that normal code, a code ‘displaced’ from its normal group of dates. Displaced Code variety notes are banknotes of those dates which bear the earlier code.
All such notes are rare. There are seven dates for which Displaced codes occur. The system of Displaced Codes only occurs with 10 Shilling and £1 notes.
In the case of 10 Shilling notes (except for code H) and £1 notes, where two codes were used on an order, good overs of the earlier code were always printed first. Sometimes the good overs were printed with their own date, resulting in a low printage date which is rare for each of the two codes: 10 Shilling, 1.12.41; One Pound:, 3.9.41.
In situations where the good overs were printed with dates also used for the standard print run, the displaced (first used) code is rare, and the normal code is generally not as rare: 10 Shilling: 10.8.43, 28.3.44; One Pound: 22.9.42, 29.10.43, 6.12.44. Also, the displaced code occurs in an island with the normal code occurring on notes both before and after it in number.
On 25 July 1944, a meeting of the board of the Central Bank of Ireland selected what would be the final pair of letter codes necessary for 10 Shilling notes, the letters R and E, for the next print run of six million notes. It was also specified that any good overs from stock of each code should be printed up at the end of the combined print run and dated 28.3.44 in addition to the normal print of this date. This created a rare displaced code variety, R, for the date, which is relatively common with code E. Similarly, £1 note good overs with codes E and F were used up as part of date 6.12.44.
The Displaced Code dates occur on the last date of every second code of Type 4 and Type 5 notes. There are three Ten Shilling note and four One Pound note Displaced Code dates.
10 Shillings 1.12.41, 28.3.44
One Pound 22.9.42, 6.12.44
10 Shillings 10.8.43
One Pound 3.9.41, 29.10.43
Displaced Code Variety Ten Shilling Notes
Displaced Code Variety One Pound Notes
www.irishpapermoney.com Version 3.0.3 Copyright ©2000 - 2022, M Mac Devitt.
