I start a bill's serial number with the letter of the "minting facility" where I made it. I made some bills at "B" when my family went on vacation there. "C" is the location of my grandma's house, and I plan on making a few bills there every time I visit. "D"- I took some of the Alanbucks stuff with me when we went on a cruise. "E" - one of my ways to kill time while sitting in lectures or otherwise left hanging around campus.

In addition to that, serial numbers work as follows:

[Mint Letter][Number of bills made in that year at that mint in that denomination][Day of month]

Day of month is in letter form. 1st=A, 2nd=B, 3rd=C, and so on. For the 27th, thru 31st, I use double letters. AA= 27th, BB= 28th, CC=29th, DD=30th, and EE= 31st.

A couple letters look similar to numbers. (O=15th, S= 19th) In that case, I draw a line between the last number and the letter.

On dollar denomination bills, I add enough zeroes to make it an eight-digit number. Sometimes there are more or fewer zeroes as a simple error, sometimes I add one or two fewer zeroes than usual to make the number fit in a tighter space.

For example: The 970th bill made at A Mint, made on May 20th, has an SN that looks like this: A00000970T.

I used to indicate the month of priting by writing it out over the bottom righthand corner. Now, I write the month it in M/D form directly over the year date on the bill's left. The date part of that makes the endletter somewhat superflous, but the habit continues.

All of my bills have designs on the front only- besides, I often couldn't put designs on the back even if I wanted to. My paper source is often scrap-paper stockpiles, with one side already used.

Speaking of using my school for Alanbucks production, School Without Walls is a major branch of the A (Rochester, NY) Mint- I draw a lot of my bills there, sometimes during breaks, sometimes during class. [I happen to be fairly good at multitasking- I can make bills and listen to the teacher at the same time, no problem. :)]. A small amount of RIT-area use in a similar manner led to "E".

Mint Report: During the first few months of 2005, bill production was very low-I simply didn't get around to it. From January 1st to April 24th, only 584 normal A-Mint bills were made, and not too much of any other bills. [In comparison, about 2500 normal A-Mint bills had been made by that time last year]

On April 25th, I decided that I thought it would be a shame to go through a whole month without making any bills whatsoever. So, I took a black marker to school and started making some $1 bills. The Bank of Alan was back in business!