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On Wednesday an Australian news service reported that a listener had discovered a typo in the design of the country's new $50 note. At least, that's where I first learned of this. But it wasn't long before E-Sylum readers spotted the story. -Editor
You had one responsibility. The Reserve Bank was left scrambling for answers on Thursday morning after radio station Triple M posted a photo on Twitter sent in by an eagle-eyed listener. The photo shows the RBA’s new $50 note under a magnifying glass and reveals an embarrassing typo in the reverse text, which features excerpts from Edith Cowan’s maiden speech to Western Australian Parliament. News.com.au has confirmed the typo is indeed real. 
In the phrase "it is a great responsibility to be the only woman here", the word "responsibility" is misspelt as "responsibilty" — three times. An RBA spokesman said, "The Reserve Bank of Australia is aware of it and the spelling will be corrected at the next print run." He confirmed there had been "around 400 million" $50 banknotes printed with the error, with 46 million already in circulation. "The next print run will commence around the middle of the year," he said. "It is the first print run of the $50 banknote we have done since the error was detected. These banknotes will be ready to be released into circulation around the end of the year." Rare currency dealer Jim Noble from Noble Numismatics said this was the first time in its history the RBA had pushed a typo through to circulation. "They do misprint notes but they’re individual happenings rather than the whole production," Mr Noble said. He added the RBA had "printed millions" so it was "not going to be rare". To read the complete article, see:
It could well be that this was a true mistake, but banknote makers have long been known to insert deliberate "mistakes" and "typos" into currency designs as an anti-counterfeiting measure. With the fix there will now be two versions of the note in circulation and available to collectors for years to come. Those magnifying glasses will come in handy. -Editor
Pablo Hoffman writes: Here’s the birth certificate of a collectible item.
Kavan Ratnatunga writes: RBA should have just claimed it as a security feature which it maybe was as explained in that Frere-Jones that I sent and was posted on E-Sylum. I did get one of these Unc Au$50 notes in RBA Sydney in 2019 March.
To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
Thanks to Kavan, Pablo, Ron Guth, Katie de Silva, Dick Hanscom, Arthur Shippee, Len Augsburger and others for passing along various articles on the topic. -Editor
To read the complete article, see:
To read some other articles, see:
Getting the Spelling Right on 46 Million Bank Notes? It’s a Big Responsibilty (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/world/australia/australia-50-dollar-bill.html)
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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