Have You Ever Seen A US Note Larger Than A $100 Note?

Yes, but only at a coin and money show. The largest bill in circulation is a one-hundred dollar bill.

When I was a kid, in Canada, we used to go the Canadian National Exhibition each summer in Toronto. It was a combination of exhibits and midway rides. One of the big banks used to have The Money Tree, behind bars. The leaves on each branch were bills of one denomination or another. I remember seeing the thousand dollar bill.

Yes. On bedside tables.

My great-aunt gave me a $500 bill before I left to go to Europe for a semester in undergrad. I probably should have kept it, but I deposited it in my bank. She was into collecting currency. When the $2 bill came out, she gave a new, crisp one to me and my brother and told us to save it. We should have listened to her. Instead, I bought candy. Oh well, I was 8 years old.

My cousin worked in a bank, and she showed me $1,000 and $10,000 bills they had at the bank when she took me on a tour when I was a kid. They were discontinued in the late 1960s. The $10,000 bill was in a glass picture frame back in the vault area. Apparently it was only one of a few hundred that were around. I was young and kind of bored with it, but I realize now how much that bill must be worth as a collector's item.

The highest denomination these days is $100, but they used to have $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and even a $100,000 bill. They don't make any of these anymore.

I just read they killed the high denomination bills in Canada because they were easier to counterfeit and the black market and criminal elements made good use of them.

Yes. Still just paper.

OP=Salmon P. Chase

[quote]When the $2 bill came out, she gave a new, crisp one to me and my brother and told us to save it. We should have listened to her. Instead, I bought candy. Oh well, I was 8 years old.

Even the "real" two dollar bills with Monticello on the back aren't rare. You can get them today easily. So buying candy is no big deal.

I would love to have had a $500 or $1,000 bill.

They discontinued the larger bills to discourage money laundering.

And, of course, as an early step in the surveillance state. Checks, credit cards and online payments are so much easier to monitor.

My late father worked for the Federal Reserve; he took us to his downtown office for a tour once; this included a glassed off area in the basement where they disposed of old worn out bills. The old bills were punched with holes in the corners and then bundled together, and then a guy literally threw them into a furnace to destroy them. This was in the late 60s, not sure if they still do this, but there were STACKS of bills all over the place, with just this one guy shoveling them into the fire.

We also went to another glassed off area where a guy slapped a $10,000 and a $100,000 bill against the glass for us to look at up close.

OP types poor.

I saw a one time trillion dollar bill USD.

No, but I've held a check for $7 million.

Here you go, OP.

I once had these as part of my collection, but no longer. I thought they were too expensive.

When I bought the $500, I suspected that it was starched and ironed, to fake “crispness”. Some people will do that. I’m just am amateur collector and don’t know all the tricks, so I have to be careful. I once got a rare note for such a relatively cheap price, that I brought it to the nearby Federal Reserve to verify that it wasn’t counterfeit.

With inflation, they should put $500 and $1,000 bills back in circulation. But they won't for reasons stated by R9.

Here’s a cool one. An antique gold certificate.

If I were skilled, and a criminal, I wouldn’t counterfeit modern currency. I’d counterfeit collectible currency, then I’d sell it to armatures. If it is accepted by an armature, it will probably be put away and not seen again for years.

Neither the Smithsonian nor the Treasury has a complete display of bank notes, which is a shame. I looked. It’s not just money, it’s also art, and history. People would be interested because “money” always draws people.

r17

That's basically what the guy with the Hitler diaries did, but with books

Does Melania carry a purse so she can give change back from a $50?

Wasn't the $500 bill de riguer for one's natty little cocaine clutch in the 70s? And 80s? I spoke to a fellow who worked the two Kingdome shows The Rolling Stones played in Seattle in October 1981. J. Geils opened for them and the guy said Peter Wolf was using a five spot to tickle the old factory.

$1,000 bills used by William A. Clark to bribe Montana state legislators.

Yes, but like R10 's father, I worked for the Fed. Surreal seeing these huge piles of bills on tables.

Guarded by people with guns, of course.

R10

Just curious...which District/Bank did your father work for?

[quote]If I were skilled, and a criminal, I wouldn’t counterfeit modern currency. I’d counterfeit collectible currency, then I’d sell it to armatures. If it is accepted by an armature, it will probably be put away and not seen again for years.

Oh, dear.

My father worked for the St Louis Fed, which was the 8th District. We used to get their in house magazine called "8th Note." He was a bank examiner and was with them for over forty years. He got hired in his early 20s, right after returning for WWII, and used to joke that his first job was "separating the paper clips from the rubber bands."

He and the other examiners used to travel, sometimes four to a car, to examine banks in southeast Missouri, Arkansas and Kentucky. His favorite places to go to were Louisville and Hopkinsville. This was in the days before the interstates, so they traveled the "blue highways," staying at roadside motels and eating at mom and pop diners and "smorgasbord" places (and he could name them all!) It was a big deal to stay in a "HoJos" in a bigger town like Louisville.

This was also before computers - they had adding machines, but by and large their work was done by hand, in pencil, on "ledgers" - one of the guys he traveled with was nicknamed "Ledger." Back then, there were DOZENS of little rural banks throughout the area - every little town had one - the Bank of Sikeston, Farmers and Commercial Bank, little joints like that, all gone now. And every single one gave out things like pens, lead pencils, those little coin purses you would squeeze to open, plastic rain hats in little cases, rulers, yardsticks, etc etc. I still have a shoebox full of this stuff, all from these long gone banks.

It was all pretty routine work, but one time I remember him telling my mom about how they discovered somebody like Mabel the bookkeeper at some tiny bank, who had been "embezzling" 10 or 20 bucks periodically to make rent, and they decided to LET HER GO - they just called her in, she cried, agreed to pay the money back, and that was that. Then they all went to the fried chicken place that somebody told them about.

Although not an avid collector by any means, my dad also picked up the habit of looking at coins, and whenever he found a particularly old or interesting one, he would keep it, making sure he reimbursed the bank the fifty cents or whatever. After his death, we found several of these little canvas bags the banks used to have, full of things like wheat pennies, buffalo nickels, different dimes and fifty cent pieces, and lots of old silver dollars, many of them worn nearly smooth from age, but with the dates still visible. I have those too.

My father was a good guy, as fair and honest as the day was long; he died in 2005 and I still miss him. I thought about him the other day when I got a very worn dollar bill in change that looked like it should be headed for the furnace.

R26

Thanks for the St. Louis Fed story!

You're welcome - (that was me, R10, forgot to sign).

Not sure if this was your experience, but my father had this INCREDIBLE loyalty to "the Fed" - if they had asked him to go to Juneau Alaska, he probably would have. It was very difficult for him to retire (we threw him a huge party), and actually for a few years after that he got a job at a small branch bank near his house as a "consultant" for the State of Missouri, which means he sat at a desk and shot the shit with customers, while going through coins to see if there was anything interesting. He got really swept up in the first series of "state quarters" and would buy a couple rolls of each state as they were issued, and pass them out to his friends. He died right around the time California was issued, and at his funeral all kinds of people kept slipping quarters into his casket - he must have had about $12 or $13 in there, which he would have loved. We left them in there.

The country of Zimbabwe underwent hyper-inflation a number of years ago. They kept issuing larger and larger denomination bills. They are all now worthless. I bought one of eBay for fun.

The Fed stories remind me...

Here’s an antique $20 (1929) and $5 (1904) bank note. I bought them on eBay. They were issued by a bank from my home town, charter number “666”. They’re popular with collectors because the “666” bank charter number appeals to some collectors.

The $20 note was so inexpensive, and in such pristine, crisp condition, I became a little suspicious. It seemed too good to be real. I live a mile from the Boston Federal reserve, so I brought the $20 down to ask them to verify it’s legitimacy. Their response was cagey. I was told that “it appears to not be ingenuine”

The Fed had a waiting room in which I sat while they were analyzing the note. There was a window between the waiting room and the offices. There was a cunt sitting at the window counting or cataloging a huge stack of counterfeit bills. She barked at me to move away from the window. She had a gun, but I regret not barking back at her that you don’t do critical, confidential work at a desk abutting the visitor’s room. And that the visitor’s room was a no barking zone.

I once asked a bank to order a $500 bill to give to my nephew for Christmas, thinking it more interesting than a few $100s, or a check. That was when I learned that they do t print $500s anymore.

I have read that North Korea is the only (known) country that actively counterfeits US bank notes while not concurrently being engaged at war with the US. Apparently, their notes are flawless.

My neighbor's dad worked for Fort Knox and don't where this was going but I just had to get that in.

OP types poor.

Before me, my Stevie had her assistant blow coke up her asshole with rolled up $1,000s.

I don’t know why I’m reminded of this, but Fort Knox was reconfigured during WWII to move America’s gold and silver reserves inland, and away from any possible Nazi attack. Lots of vaults, machine guns on the top of the building, smack in the middle of an Army base.

Then the trick was how to ship all that gold from Boston, NY, DC, and elsewhere, in secret. I forget how that did it, but they also had to consider the weight on the train tracks, and trucks, and what the roads would tolerate.

They also stored a lot of foreign valuables. I believe that had the Crown Jewels from Holland or Belgium, or Denmark during wwii.. They had a lot of Germany’s gold In storage as a hedge against a Soviet take over. That became public knowledge about a decade ago and the Germans became embarrassed and took their gold back.

There are periodic conspiracy theories that there is actually no gold in Fort Knox at all. There was a congressional visit some many years ago that inspected the vaults.

One last fun fact. During the Manhattan Project to build the A-bomb, they needed massive amounts of copper to create an Electric battery or something like that. But copper was in short supply and needed for the war effort. Instead, the “borrowed” all the silver bullion from Ft. Knox. Silver is an even better conductor than copper and it all worked out.

I still have my original new $2 bills my parents gave me as a kid.

The World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001 was storing 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver in vaults under 4 World Trade Center. It must have been huge task to move all that gold and silver when they were doing the clean up. Wonder where they moved it all to.

When the vaults were locked September 10, the gold was worth $272.30 per ounce, or $103,211,503.

By September 21, its value -- wherever it is -- had soared 7.6 percent to $292.90 per ounce, or $111,019,644.

And the silver rose 10.3 percent in value from $4.19 per ounce, or $129,063,811, to $4.62 per ounce, or $142,114,861.

US paper money use to be much larger. This is how a large-size Series 1914 $5 Federal Reserve note compares in size to a small-size Series 1928 $5 FRN. Large-size notes measure 7.50 by 3.125 inches. Small-size notes are 6.14 by 2.61 inches in size.

[quote]And every single one gave out things like pens, lead pencils, those little coin purses you would squeeze to open, plastic rain hats in little cases, rulers, yardsticks, etc etc. I still have a shoebox full of this stuff, all from these long gone banks.

You'd probably be a big hit on eBay with that stuff.

A $10er. Not mine 😗

Thanks for the interesting stories!

I like the US notes. I hate plastic notes from Europe! They feel so cheap!

Larger note?

I prefer "full figured," thank you very much!

Woodrow Wilson graces the $100,000 bill, which was only used for official transactions between Federal Reserve banks, and was obviously never in circulation; neither was the $10,000 bill.

You cannot get a $500 bill from a bank, even though they are still considered legal tender. All high denomination bills ($500 and $1000s- were discontinued in 1969. Banks have been instructed since then to turn them in for destruction. There are only something like 340 $100,000 bills in existence, and about five thousand $500 bills.

Fun fact: you can buy a legal tender1$ bill with Obama's face in the White House gift shop.

I was born with a 3 dollar bill I my hand!