Looks like the Feds are as superstitious as your grandma.
From:
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n2/v69n2p55.html
Since 1972, when SSA began assigning SSNs and issuing cards centrally from Baltimore, MD, the area number has been assigned based on the ZIP code of the mailing address provided on the application for the original Social Security card. The applicant's mailing address may not be the same as the place of residence.Some exceptions to the general east-to-west, ascending-order area numbering scheme exist:
- Sequence 700 through 728 was assigned to railroad workers until July 1963.
- 586 was divided among American Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, Americans employed abroad by American employers and, from 1975 to 1979, Indochinese refugees.
- 580 was assigned to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; sequences 581 through 584 and 596 through 599 were also assigned to Puerto Rico.
- Sequence 577 through 579 was assigned to the District of Columbia.
- Sequences 587 through 588 and 589 through 595 were assigned to Mississippi and Florida, respectively, for use after those states exhausted their initial area number allotments.
- Sequence 729 through 733 has been allocated to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for SSNs issued through the Enumeration at Entry (EaE) program, described below.
- No SSNs with an area number in the 800s or 900s, or with a 000 area number, have been assigned.
- No SSNs with an area number of 666 have been or will be assigned.