Ten Fun Facts About Crane & Co. - Bargaineering

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 09:07 AM PDT

Who are Crane & Co. and why would we want to know ten fun facts about them? Open up your wallet or your purse, wherever you put your money, and pull out a bill. Crane & Co. manufactures the paper the money is printed on. In fact, Crane & Co. prints money for Sweden, Saudi Arabia, India, several African countries, India, and Paraguay. While they’re also a high end stationary provider, three quarters of their revenues are from currency business accounts.

Here are a few more fun facts about Crane & Co.:

They were founded in 1801. They’ve been printing paper for U.S. currency for over 130 years, since 1879, and one of the company legends is that the company used to print paper for Paul Revere to print Colonial currency.
The paper-making legacy precedes the founding of Crane & Co. Zenas Crane co-founded the company in 1801 but his father, Stephen Crane, took over one of the first paper mills in Massachusetts in 1770. He named it the Liberty Paper Mill.
Their US facility is located in Dalton, Massachusetts. Dalton is named after Tristam Dalton, speaker of of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and was incorporated in 1784. It’s largest industry became papermaking, in large part because of its largest employer in Crane.
They are the sole provider of currency paper for the U.S. Treasury. The paper they supply contains all of the security features in the final bill from threads to watermarks to the special embedded fibers. The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing does the actual printing of the bills themselves.
There are only three companies that print currency, manufacture the paper, and the security features – they are one of them. One of the others i English and the other is German.
Crane produces 100% cotton station made from 100% recovered cotton fibers. They don’t cut down any trees and instead rely on recovered cotton.
Winthrop M. Crane, one of the CEOs of Crane & Co., became a politician. He was the 40th Governor of Massachusetts (1900-1903) and as a Senator from Massachusetts from 1904 until 1913.
There is a Crane Museum of Papermaking. The museum is located in what was once the Rag Room of the Crane’s 1844 Old Stone Mill and was opened in 1930. It’s free, open Monday through Friday from 1 – 5 p.m. from early June through mid-October.
As is the case with many government contracts, Crane & Co. won the initial currency contract by being the lowest bidder. According to CNN Money, they discovered the lowest bid and submitted one that was much lower. The other bidders tried to lock him in his room but he snuck out and was able to submit the lower bid. They’ve been producing US currency paper ever since!
Before Crane & Co. became the sole supplier of currency paper, the job was contracted to the American Bank Note Company and the National Bank Note Company during the Civil War. Both companies also supplied paper money for the Confederacy at the same time.

Their main site deals with premium cotton stationary but I had fun poking around their Crane Currency website and looking at their various brochures. The new Motion technology looks very cool and certainly would add another layer of security to our currency (it’s currently used in the new Costa Rican 20,000 Colónes note).

Ten Fun Facts About Crane & Co. from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

Series I Bonds Inflation Rate Update (Nov 2010)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 04:05 AM PDT

With another September come and gone, it’s time to take a look at our good friend, the Series I savings bond. Savings bonds are a nice safe way to diversify your savings since they are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. They won’t make you rich but they have a lot of nice benefits (deferral of gains, no state and local income taxes on the interest, and there is an exemption from federal taxes for educational use) that make them attractive. I wouldn’t put all of my money into bonds but a little bit is good as a safety net.

That being said, I like Series I bonds the most because they offer a protection against inflation. With the release of inflation figures in September, we can now easily calculate what the interest rate portion of the Series I Savings Bond will be this upcoming month. The September 2010 CPI-U was 218.439 and the March 2010 CPI-U was 217.631. This yields a semi-annual increase of 0.37%.

It’s difficult to predict what the fixed rate on the Series I bond will be but if we use the 0.2% for bonds sold between May 2010 and October 2010, we find that the new rate will be:
Interest rate = Fixed rate + (2 x Semiannual inflation rate) + (Semiannual inflation rate x Fixed rate)
Interest rate = 0.002 + (2 x 0.00371) + (0.00371 x 0.002)
Interest rate = 0.0094

That means the interest rate on Series I bonds will be 0.94%. Remember, the fixed rate sticks with the bond so check your bonds to see what your fixed rate is (or use the Treasury’s historical rate list to find the date you purchased your bonds). I haven’t purchased Series I bonds since April 2008 and back then the fixed rate was 1.20%, before it fell to 0.00% for six months. Using this Series I bond interest rate calculator, I learn that my bonds will be earning 1.944 APY for six months. While it’s not as good as some of the best CD rates out there, it’s better than a savings account.

Do you have any savings bonds?

Series I Bonds Inflation Rate Update (Nov 2010) from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.