It's rather surprising, but many of the questions I get from coin collectors indicate either a total lack of knowledge of paper money collecting, or surprise that anyone would collect paper. In spite of this lack of awareness of a related hobby, if you ask almost any paper collector you will quickly find out that paper money collecting is alive, well, thriving, and growing fairly rapidly.
Here again the primary interest in the U.S. is in our own paper, but there is a growing interest in foreign bank notes that compares very favorably with the matching interest in foreign coins. This is certainly a natural reaction or trend, as we tend to gravitate toward those things that are most familiar to us. When we get into notes of the world, we are bucking an atlas full of strange languages, denominations that may or may not be readable and features that you never have seen on U.S. bank notes.
As a single example of that, many countries use matching partial design elements on both sides of the note, which on a genuine note line up exactly to complete the design. This is something that never has been successfully used on U.S. paper money. Whether the Bureau of Engraving and Printing couldn't make the technology work or for some other reason, this and other anti-counterfeiting measures have never appeared on a U.S. bank note.
Another eye opener, after growing up with notes that carry two ink colors - green and black - is to see the rainbow of colors used on world bank notes. The newer U.S. notes have finally begun using some of the better anti-counterfeiting measures, but they are sticking to the same old color scheme. Many countries use specific different primary colors for each denomination. While the BEP claims for a variety of reasons that this won't work, it has been successfully used for many decades in other countries.
The BEP's chief argument against color is that it will distract the eye from signs that the note has been altered, or is a counterfeit. They feel that the public would become dependent on the color, allowing crooks to deceive the public by altering the color.
Fighting counterfeiting is a never-ending battle as the fakers constantly improve their product. The governments are forced to turn more and more to high tech methods of protecting the genuine notes from being copied. The use of inks which shift color with the angle of view, and holograms are just a couple of the newer deterrents. Keeping up with all of the new methods can become a full time job and researching them is often nearly impossible as the government printers fight to keep their secrets out of the hands of counterfeiters.
All in all, you are less likely to run into fake bank notes than you are into fake coins. Because of the higher values involved, most governments concentrate on catching crooks who print fake notes with coins coming in second.
Alan Herbert retired as editor of Coins Magazine in 1994. He is now a contributing editor for Coins and three other Krause Publications periodicals. Known throughout the Internet as "Answerman," Herbert writes four question-and-answer columns in the KP numismatic magazines and newspapers, a job he started in 1968.dfdfaffdsaf
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