Everything you own has a number on it somewhere. Your refrigerator, for example, has one that you must have if you need a warranty repair, a recall notice, or the correct replacement shelf. The manufacturer has hidden this critical string of numbers on the ceiling of the fridge, behind the crisper drawer, or on the back panel you’d have to drag the whole appliance out to see. (Presumably for its own protection.)
Then there are the other numbers. The one that tells you the exact day in 1988 your guitar was made, or the one that says your print is 212 of 500. These numbers will never fix anything, but they’re out in the open, and you probably checked them the day you got the thing home.
The rule seems to be that the less a number can do for you, the more you’ll do for it. Some people will even pay a lot more than a dollar for a dollar bill, as long as it has the right number.
Special by Accident
Every dollar bill has an eight-digit serial number, which exists mainly so someone at the US Treasury can keep count. Most people never look at it. But every once in a while, someone glances at the change in their hand and sees a sequence of digits too special to be random, and the bill stops looking like money and starts looking like a prize.
For some people, one lucky find is enough to make every bill worth a second look. Before long, they’re collectors with insider names for the best sequences: radars that read the same backward and forward, ladders that count up in order, and solids that repeat a single digit eight times. And where there are collectors, there are dealers. One dealer listed a dollar bill numbered 00000002 for $2,500.
Of course, it’s also just a dollar. Feed one into a vending machine, and it will be rejected anyway, because vending machines judge every dollar equally, and harshly. That might be the whole appeal. A dollar is about the most ordinary object anyone owns, and a good serial number turns it into a coincidence that only matters if someone decides it does. Nobody planned it, nobody else spotted it, and you happened to be the one holding it when it came around.
Most numbers that feel special, though, aren’t left to luck. Somebody put them there on purpose. (Sometimes, that somebody is Curio & Co.)
One of Many
Pets get names. Boats get names. Objects make do with a number. That’s not much, but for something that started out as one of many, made from the same parts and lined up on the same shelf as the others, the number gives it an identity. Reading a serial number is a little like being introduced: it changes nothing about the object, and quite a lot about how you see it. It’s no longer one of the row. It’s this particular one.
An edition number goes a step further. It tells you not only which one you have but how many there are. Your print isn’t just number 212, it’s 212 of 500, which means that somewhere out there, 499 other people have the same picture on their wall. You’ll never meet them. You wouldn’t recognize them on the street, unless they happened to be carrying it. But you’re all part of the same audience, scattered around the world, in seats someone assigned one by one (and, ideally, double-checked).
Numbered for the Fun of It
At Curio & Co., we assigned ours with a rubber numbering stamp. Our first book, Finding Frank and His Friend, was a limited run of 2,000 copies, and every one was stamped by hand three times: once on the book, once on its certificate of authenticity, and once on the manila envelope the certificate came in. That’s 6,000 stamps, all pressed by hand, all in the right order. (We checked. Repeatedly.) Every number then went into a register, and many owners wrote their names in it themselves. The register still sits in a place of pride on the studio shelf.
None of this was strictly necessary, which was most of the fun. Being able to authenticate something from the Curioverse, a world we made up, never stopped being delightful. So naturally, we kept going.
The Gadabout TM-1050 Time Machine User’s Manual came with its own numbered certificate of authenticity, and the back of the manual has space for a dealer’s stamp certifying the delivery inspection, followed by pages for the machine’s regular maintenance and calibration. Buy the manual from us in person at an event, and we’d stamp the inspection. Bring it back the next year, and we’d stamp the next service. And so on, up to your 82,000-year service check. These stamps did absolutely nothing, of course, because there is no time machine. (Its calibration record is nevertheless impeccable.)
What the Number Knows
So what do we think the number is telling us? Nothing practical. The guitar already plays, and the print already hangs straight. What it does say is that someone was paying attention, that out of all the identical ones, this one was counted and written down, and that it mattered to somebody before it ever mattered to us.
Your refrigerator was counted too. Its number is still back there behind the crisper drawer, waiting for anyone to care. It may be waiting a while.
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If you own a copy of Finding Frank and His Friend and aren’t sure whether you’re in the register, send us your serial number at office@curioandco.com, and we’ll make sure you are.
