From: "John III"

the letter I as the first letter of the Serial number. Does that mean that
these are printed for only the Minneapolis district? Also, how do they decide
which district to print them for? Requests from a district?

There are 12 Districts in the Federal Reserve. Originally, the process was to
send the matching Notes to the District ordering them. However, since about
1990, the BEP has re-vamped the system, and now the District designations are
used primarilly as an accounting system; now, when a Federal District Bank
orders Notes, they can receive them bearing any of the 12 District notations.
Since using the newer system of accounting, it seems the Notes with the most
printings seem to be B & L, and with the fewest C & I.

How do they know how many of these star notes to print up in advance,
experience, lucky guess?

They have a guideline that they follow. They'll print up 320,000 at a time,
until the 'need' is fulfilled. The number needed is determined by the orders
for Notes by the District Federal District Banks. In this case, there must
have been orders from at least one of the Federal District Banks for $2 Notes
which sent their reserves below acceptable minimum stockpile, which means they
must now print more for that purpose.

Due regulations, they must print in the most current Series, and the 2003
Series was established prior to the order. When a new Series for a
denomination is first started, the initial action is to print Star Notes to
have them at the ready.

At this point, they only have to print and stockpile them. Unless there are
actual orders for $2 Notes that further deplete the stockpile, they don't have
to issue them.

8-/
Coin Saver