Comments on: Historical Currency

Historical Currency

crunchland — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 20:40:58 -0800

Have you ever seen a $100,000 bill?
From the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Historical Currency Gallery.

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 20:44:14 -0800

yes i have, twice, at the smithsonian and at a boy scout jamboree in 1978. no, i was not casing the place. (hey, where would i have gotten that broke)

By: Stynxno

Stynxno — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 20:47:26 -0800

hey, where would i have gotten that broke Vegas?

By: quonsar

quonsar — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 20:49:40 -0800

i tried to break one at mickey-d's yesterday, and the feeb at the register tried to fake me out with three $33,333 bills and something she called "a single". who'd ever fall for that?

By: boaz

boaz — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 20:53:30 -0800

That's much nicer than the design of the $200 bill.

By: PrinceValium

PrinceValium — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:13:55 -0800

For those who haven't seen it: the urban legend of the $2 bill at Taco Bell.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:23:21 -0800

Where's the one with all of the presidents on it, having a party with Jimmy Carter passed out on the couch?

By: philfromhavelock

philfromhavelock — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:32:23 -0800

Moo, a three dollar bill. My grandfather claimed the ghost of a drover haunted the house on the next farm. Doors would slam, stairs would creak, typical ghostly stuff.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 22:11:05 -0800

I don't mean to politicize this thread, but it's scary to think that President Bush just asked for 87,000 of those $100,000 bills.

By: boaz

boaz — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 22:24:03 -0800

Isn't that really 870,000 of them? Or are those 87,000 just the ones he's gonna dump on the Oval Office floor and roll around in?

By: gyc

gyc — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 22:47:56 -0800

We just need to steal the trillion dollar bill back from Fidel Castro.

By: skallas

skallas — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:09:52 -0800

I love the back, it looks like a game show graphic. "You've won ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!!!!" So when are we finally going to do away with the penny, nickel, and dime?

By: Stauf

Stauf — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:11:12 -0800

Wow. I wonder how much that bill is worth...

By: jonson

jonson — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:34:34 -0800

Hey, check it out - your posts can end in question marks too!

By: will

will — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:40:34 -0800

*tweet* Curmudgeon foul! jonson looses coolness! *tweet*

By: skallas

skallas — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:53:57 -0800

>I wonder how much that bill is worth... Lets check the inflation calculator: What cost $100000 in 1934 would cost $1337257.18 in 2002. Yup, that's the equivalant of a 1.3 million dollar bill.

By: jonson

jonson — Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:59:35 -0800

oh, will, it was a joke! crunchland knows this isn't the same kind of "question mark" post.

By: PrinceValium

PrinceValium — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 00:13:19 -0800

Nope, skallas, it's still worth $100,000. Paper money isn't affected by inflation.

By: skallas

skallas — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 00:30:30 -0800

Yep, you're right. I guess what I should have said that it was the equivalent of printing up a 1.3 million dollar bill today. Even more interesting, an item worth $100,000 today would have cost $7,700 back in 1934.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 01:10:28 -0800

The Inflation Calculator

By: will

will — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 10:33:46 -0800

Checks the replay monitor... It's all good! Playball!

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 10:49:21 -0800

What I can't wrap around my head is why or how anyone would use a one hundred thousand dollar bill. When one deals with numbers that large, you have to go through banks anyway and most of the time it's electronic. I guess if you were paying a ransom, you could get an evelope full of hundred thousand dollar bills instead of a briefcase full of smaller stuff, but then the kidnappers would kill your wife anyway cuz they always demand "small unmarked bills." In a world where breaking a fifty or passing twos as real are almost criminal offenses, who would even consider printing hundred thousand dollar bills? I just don't understand human beings.

By: bshort

bshort — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 11:03:19 -0800

Zachsmind: I believe ginormous bills like this were only really used to transfer money from one fed bank to another. John D Rockefeller probably did not go running around with a stack of these in his pocket.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 11:10:50 -0800

Immediately after posting the above lameness, I glanced back at the link and caught that bit on a different page about how they stopped printing anything bigger than a hundred back in 1969. So color me slow-on-the-uptake. =)

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 11:32:57 -0800

about how they stopped printing anything bigger than a hundred back in 1969 Really? So sad. When I was saving to go to Europe back in 1983 I kept my cash in a little plastic container in thousand dollar bills. Those were sweet. They smelt better than regular money, too. I think you can still get them here in Canada, should you wish.

By: bshort

bshort — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 11:42:17 -0800

Really? So sad. When I was saving to go to Europe back in 1983 I kept my cash in a little plastic container in thousand dollar bills. Those were sweet. They smelt better than regular money, too. How many thousands did you need?

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 15:44:54 -0800

Two.

By: piper28

piper28 — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 18:41:06 -0800

Hmm, even though they've stopped printing them, I know I've seen thousand dollar bills in circulation. Now, I've only seen one, and it was maybe as much as 20 years ago. Bastard in front of my in line at some restaurant in Disney World used one to buy something like 4 drinks and 4 fries. As a result, I had to wait for them to verify the bill as real before they got to me.

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 08:34:30 -0800

Bastard in front of my in line at some restaurant in Disney World used one to buy something like 4 drinks and 4 fries. So he got, what, like $8.24 in change?

By: chuq

chuq — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 10:44:11 -0800

Hmm, even though they've stopped printing them, I know I've seen thousand dollar bills in circulation. When I was a kid, I'd see Monty Hall give them out all the time on "Let's Make a Deal."

By: crunchland

crunchland — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 18:23:17 -0800

Thinking about the size of that $87 billion request got me to working it out, visually. (self link)