A year ago we were all trying to use the last Maltese Liri in our pockets and purses and getting rid of the coins saved in our money boxes, while replacing them with new Euro notes and shiny coins from freshly opened starter packs.

Now, a year on, we have all got used to the new colours and denominations of our new currency. But, are the Euros notes in our pockets Maltese?

Unlike the coins, Euro notes do not have a nationalised side, however, there are codes which identify the origin and the country for which the notes were intended.

Taking a closer look at the front of the Euro notes, one might notice a small code consisting of a letter, 3 numbers, another letter and a final number. This is called the short code and indicates the place where the note was printed. An example of this is J044A2, mostly seen on the right hand side of a e50 note. This can be decoded as follows:

J- means that the note was printed in the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato in Rome.

044 means that the note was created on the 44th plate of this particular mint

A2 represent the row and column of the plate where the note was positioned.

The reverse of the note bears a serial number made up of a letter and eleven digits. Each country of the Euro Zone has a letter assigned to it, with which serial numbers of these notes start. Most of our e20 and e50 notes carry the letter S, which shows that these notes were intended for Italy. An automatic question pops up at this moment. What is the letter assigned to Malta? Notes purposely printed for Malta will bear the letter F and will be put in circulation later on this year. During the past year we have been receiving mainly, Italian, Dutch, Greek and German notes together with some Slovenian and Austrian ones. This, apart from the notes belonging to other countries that are being brought in the country by hand by people travelling to and away from the country.

According to the website www.EuroBillTracker.com, the majority of our notes are Italian ones. This has been concluded from a sample of 109, 000 notes which were imputed from Malta in this site during 2008. Italian notes totalled 44% of the notes in circulation in Malta. This was followed by Germany, Netherlands and Greece with 21%, 15.3% and 8.7% respectively. www.EuroBillTracker.com is an international non-profit volunteer team dedicated to tracking Euro notes around the world and has been in existence since 1 January 2002. Its 138,000 members track the movements of Euro notes around the globe. These users key in the serial number of Euro notes, to see whether this note has been found anytime beforehand, and how many kilometres and days apart.

This site has a database of over 55 million notes. To date, Malta is represented by 139 users, who have contributed with over 111,000 notes. The furthest note was previously found in Finland, 3309KM away, while the oldest note was registered in Germany over 6 years, precisely 2196 days, before being found again in Malta last August.

Anyone interested in joining this team, is requested to register for free on www.EuroBillTracker.com