I went out to pub triva night on Monday, and in the change I received from one of my beers, I noticed a “Where’s George” stamp on one of the bills (in case you don’t know, www.wheresgeorge.com allows you to track where money has traveled). Last night I entered the bill and was amused to see that the previous entry was from the town I lived in up until about a year ago.
Then I read the note on the previous entry – holy crap…that was my entry! I wrote that last one too! Over a year and a half ago, and a 40-mile drive away, but that was my fricking entry.
Would there even be a way to calculate the odds of this happening? I’m sure it happens now and then where someone receives the same bill more than once, but naturally they just don’t realize it. But for a specific bill like this, and over a distance like that…wow…gotta be astronomical.
Yeah…I don’t stamp my own, but when I come across one with a stamp, I’ll usually put it in my pocket (rather than in my wallet) and take a look at where its been.
I used to do it a lot more when I was sending dollar bills out as postage money to QSL cards back for ham radio contacts. Even then the bills reappeared very rarely. Still have my stamp though.
Yep! Its just a fun little thing, and takes no time. You only get a few responses back, but its interesting to see how a bill has traveled over a 2 year period or so.
Reminds me of a vaguely similar incident when I was living in the States. I discovered there was a place a couple of hours away that sold English foodstuffs and I was craving Marmite, so I drove there at the weekend. As I was buying my teabags etc. I noticed something on the wall that looked familiar. It was a pub sign that said “The Saracen’s Head”. Then I looked closer, and at the brewery stamp, and realised that it was the pub sign from the pub in my town in England where I used to drink when I was a teenager. The pub had closed down a few years before and I guess the sign must have ended up at auction and found its way to a store in Connecticut. I was completely freaked out.
Do what? Put the bill in Wheresgeorge and mark it? Why not?
Actually, I’m surprised how few people know about this and/or enter a bill that already has a stamp on it. I’m rated #126 in my state with a George score, yet I only mark a few bills a week, and only one in a hundred ever gets re-entered.
Does anyone remember an episode of “That’s Incredible” back in the early eighties?
A girl in Germany got a 5 dollar American bill in the mail from her uncle in the States. He had written in German Happy Birthday to (her name) from his name. She cashed it in for local currency.
A few years later she was visiting the USA and got the same 5 dollar bill back in change.
She came on the show and showed the bill.
It seemed pretty “Incredible” then. Now I am not sure it is even possible.
(I can’t believe I even remember this show)
Enter my own currency? No way. I do enter stamped bills that I get in change though. I have gotten maybe five or six in my life but it’s been years since I have seen one. I usually enter the other bills in my wallet when I enter the one with the stamp. When I did a lot of business travel, I would wait to spend it until I was far from where I got it.
Come to think of it, I rarely use cash anymore. That explains why I haven’t seen one in so long.
It happens. I have more than 20,000 bills entered, and have received a few dozen back. Only one, however, very far away - it was entered in Visalia, CA, and I got it back from a bank in San Francisco, about 4 hours away.
22,500, as of right now, and I’m probably not in the top 500 users based on number of bills entered. I think three people have broken a million - at least one is a business owner who marks every bill he gives out in change. As a whole, the sitea has seen almost 200 million bills entered, over a billion dollars worth…
