The most basic definition of a web bill is one that was made on a special web-fed press. In order to understand this, though, you should know about the regular press. Bills are fed into the press thirty-two at a time, four across and eight down. There are four quadrants made of eight bills each, numbered 1-4. Within each quadrant, each bill is given a letter, A-H, depending on its position.

On very old bills, pre-1963, there will be no number on the upper left. Instead of "A4", you might just see "A" or even "Q"! This is because very old bills were printed with only eighteen bills per sheet. Thus, there were enough letters in the alphabet not to require the numbers seen on today's bills. The letters range from A to R, as R is the eighteenth letter of the alphabet.

What's that you say? Your $1 bill doesn't show this letter/number set at all? And it's from either 1988A, 1993, or 1995? Well then, my friend, you have yourself a web bill. Because they were made on a different type of press which didn't accept sheets of thirty-two, there's no official position for each bill. That's why web bills don't have this marking on them. Now check out the second set of plate numbers. On normal bills, there will be one or three letters followed by some numbers. The large letter always corresponds to the position letter in the first set of plate markings. Web bills, again, aren't set up this way, so all that will be there for the second plate set are numbers with no letters whatsoever. Finally, flip the bill over. On normal $1's, there is a single set of plate numbers located in the lower-right of the white space surrounding "ONE". But web bills differ in that they have plate numbers to the right of "IN GOD WE TRUST".

The press itself was designed to be able to print a lot of bills in a little amount of time. It was logical, therefore, to only experiment on $1's, the most produced bill. The experiment began with series 1988A bills and then was gradually reduced with 1993's until the last run with series 1995's. The production decreased throughout the years because the inks faded too quickly. The bills went through the press too quickly to really pick up the ink and they thus faded quickly, meaning more bills had to be printed and more money had to be spent to print them. This forced the experimental press to shut down in 1996.

These bills are special to collectors because they're not easy to find in circulation, regardless of age. Three factors can be attributed to this. First, there were not many made. Remember that this was an experiment, so only certain serial number blocks were designated for web bills. Second, they were constantly pulled from circulation and shredded. The fading inks caused the Federal Reserve to destroy these bills in "bad" condition. Third, collectors nabbed the ones that survived. Those with astute vision noticed the subtle differences with the plate markings and saved them just in case. Good call by them.

Web bills can be worth from $2.50 in good condition to $7 uncirculated, depending on demand. 1988A Atlanta FRB star notes (the only star web notes printed) are worth hundreds of dollars because they were not supposed to have been printed. Only certain Federal Reserve Banks were issued web bills, and they differed from year to year. Generally, the last serial number letter is toward the beginning of the alphabet, but this is not always the case.

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