For securtiy reasons, involving the printing company and your local bank.

Because some merchants don't like to accept checks from 'newbies,' to try to eliminate risk of bouncing. When I had a checking account (for like three months) they started us out with 500 for that very reason.

Two reasons, according to: http://www.garamchai.com/askadesi/ask15.htm Financial Reason Any banker will easily vouch that 90% of all forged checks are drawn on accounts less than barely 3 or 6 months old. So, lower the check-number, more prone for suspicion it is. Many merchants outrightly used to deny checks of lower check-numbers. So, consumers started asking the Check-providers (whether it's the Bank itself or private third party providers) to supply checks bearing higher numbers. After all, in US, check number is just a reference for the consumer, the Bank and payment-receiving party are concerned only about the "Routing Number" of the Bank and "Account Number" of the consumer. That way, consumer has the freedom of choosing his own number for checks. Instead of making any arbitrary number as the starting of check-number sequence, most Banks today follow the procedure of issuing checks for new checking accounts starting with the number 101. Anyway, forgery/fraud can still happen. This is not fool-proof remedy for it. Technical Reason When checks are printed, the first sheet through is at the bottom of the hopper (paper stack at the printing machine assembly) and the last sheet through is at the top. This necessitates backward-functioning (countdown) numbering machines, which are set to start at the ending number and finish with the starting number. The order of checks can then be completed and shipped in proper numerical sequence ready for use by the customer. As the order is printed, and the numbers recede, they would read say 117, 116,...,102,101,100,099,098, etc. unless the press is stopped and the superfluous zero is manually depressed after 100 so that 99 is printed instead of 099. Again, at the point of 13,12,11,10,09, the press would have to be stopped again to eliminate the second superfluous zero. By encouraging the use of starting check orders with 101, the printer has saved the need to stop the press twice. This is a saving in time and efficiency, not to mention money!

You have the option to decide how you want your checks to be numbered when you open a new account. I started mine at 1201