The redesigned $5 Federal Reserve Note, with added purple color, new watermarks and other new and altered features will be released to circulation March 13, 2008, the Federal Reserve has announced.

As I've mentioned previously, production has started at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's Fort Worth, Texas, facility. At least, I've seen a print run of star notes on the October 2007 monthly production report, and more star notes and some regular non-stars on the November report.

I'm told that about 180,000,000 colorized $5 bills (so some $900 million) are expected to be on hand at Federal Reserve banks for the initial release.

The new notes will bear series date Series 2006, the BEP tells me. 

But, a bunch of current, non-colorized $5s produced by the BEP starting in May 2007 also bear the Series 2006 date. By my count based on the BEP monthly production reports, about 409,600,000 ($2.048 billion) pre-colorized Series 2006 $5s had been produced for circulation through the November 2007 report.

Will having two very different $5 designs with the same series date cause any confusion?

Will you be saving nice-looking $5s that come your way?

Note also that Series 2006 (pre-colorized) $5 FRN uncut sheets went on sale today from the BEP. Click here to see the BEP's sales page for these sheets.

UPDATE: A little over an hour after I posted this, the November BEP production report became available. Just a coincidence?  Hmmm ... probably! In any event, I've updated the post to reflect the current information.