US misprinted 30 mln new $100 bills; Release Delayed Again

The new $100 bills were designed to reduce counterfeiting, and were initially scheduled to be released in 2010. But that summer, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing noticed that the bills were being produced with a blank sliver, due to a fold in the paper. The release date was therefore pushed back to 2011, and again pushed back to Oct. 2013.

... the Washington, D.C. factory produced "clearly unacceptable" versions of the $100 bills, according to a July memo that the New Yorker obtained from the bureau. Recent batches that came from the factory were "mashed", which means they were produced with too much ink and the lines are not as crisp as they should be. The New Yorker compared it to a kid trying "to carefully color inside the lines -- using watercolors and a fat paintbrush."