Redesigned $100 Bill
The redesigned $100 bill hits markets on Oct. 8. US Treasury Handout

Up to $30 million in recently-redesigned new $100 bills have been destroyed after a printing accident rendered them unusable.

“We shipped three million hundred-dollar notes to the Federal Reserve,” Darlene Anderson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, told ABC News. “During an inspection they noticed a defect in a marginal number of notes.”

“The few that were found to be defective, we will destroy here, “Anderson continued. “When we go back to reinspect all the notes, we will charge the Federal Reserve for that process.”

The exact amount of $100 bills that were destroyed has not been released, and while Anderson says that only “a small fraction” were scrapped, the NY Daily News estimates that up to $30 million in bills may have been destroyed in the printing accident.

As to the cause of the accident, Anderson tells ABC News that ”too much ink was used to print a small number of notes. As a result the ink in these notes didn’t stay in the area it was intended for.”

Despite the setback, Anderson confirmed that the new $100 bills would be ready for circulation on the planned date of Oct. 8.

The Federal Reserve initially announced that the $100 bill redesign would enter circulation back in February 2010, according to the Associated Press. However, only a few short months before the debut, the Fed stated that the redesigned bill would be placed on an indefinite hold after printing issues left numerous creases on the bill. Back in April, the Fed announced that new $100 bill will roll out on Oct. 8.

The redesigned $100 bill will sport several new security features designed to thwart counterfeiters, including a blue 3-D security ribbon, according to the Federal Reserve. The security ribbon is designed to be easy for laypeople to verify but extremely hard for counterfeiters to reproduce. Other new security features on the redesigned $100 bill include a holographic image of a disappearing Liberty Bell inside an inkwell.

The redesigned $100 bill is the last in a series of currency redesigns initially rolled out in 2003. That year, the Federal Reserve introduced several new color highlights in the $20 bill. The redesign proved both popular and effective, leading to further government redesigns of the $50, $10 and $5 bills. The $1 bill has not been announced to receive a redesign.