I used to ask for them at the bank and spend them. Many similar stories to the ones above.
Now in Canada, I use two-dollar coins (worth about $1.50 US) all the time. Such a normal denomination here, and nobody freaks out over the fact that it’s a coin.
A company around here celebrating their 2nd year in business paid off their Christmas bonuses in $2 bills. A few years ago.
It was a big government contractor with several hundred employees.
$2 bills were everywhere for months.
My kids loved getting them back in change.
Big military bases and nearby towns have always had kind of a love/hate kind of relationship. I’m going from memory from a similar story I heard a long time ago, referencing something that happened even farther back.
Sometime back in the 1950s or 1960s, so the story goes, after some sort of controversy with the city government or a snarky editorial in the local rag the base commander at one of the large bases got a huge case of the ass and directed that every soldier and civilian assigned to the base would be paid in $2 bills. I guess it got the point across.
In 1986 and 1987, I lived in Seattle attending the University of Washington. Nearly every time I shopped at the Safeway in the U-District, I got back a $2 bill as part of my change. That never happened at any other place I shopped at in Seattle or the rest of the State of Washington. I don’t know how and why that store seemed to have a state-wide monopoly on that type of currency.
Ooo this thread takes me back. My dad used to get them out of the bank and use them in stores and such for kicks. I started doing it too-it can be fun. We both had experiences with people offering us money for the bills and didn’t say no. More fool them. I still have a sheet of them he brought home somewhere, but I just can’t bear to spend ‘em.
Years ago, my county arranged to have local banks get in a supply of $2 bills, and encouraged people to spend them within the county so as to make more visible how money spent at local businesses circulated within the (rural) county instead of moving away.
As nobody’s cash drawers contained a section for $2 bills, most of the local businesses stuck them under the drawer and then turned them all back into the banks instead of handing them back out in change; so the promotion didn’t work very well. But I took in enough of them at farmers’ market to put a line for them on the form I use to count out the cash box after market. I haven’t seen more than a very occasional $2 for years, though; I could remove that line (there is also an “other bills” line, so I could use that if one did show up), but on any given day it doesn’t seem worth the bother to remove it.
I still think of them as “[X ] County 2’s”.
The Monticello shops and admission booth use $2 bills for making change.
Using two dollar bills to prove a point has a long history and has been done many times.
In Los Angeles in 1981 or so (it may have been a national thing or just local) there was a day where African Americans spent $2 bills to show that they were valuable to the local economy. My friend worked at a Toys R Us and a black man came in with his kids and bought a huge cart of toys. When my friend fumbled with where to put them in the register the customer was thrilled and yelled out “This n****r just bought some toys and this white boy doesn’t know what to do” over and over. My friend didn’t know about the protest and was totally baffled.
My uncle in Washington State used to do the “peelable bundle” bit with $2 bills as well. I use them for cocktail waitron tips in Vegas. It’s an easy way to be slightly more memorable.
I had a cashier tell me that an SBA dollar coin “isn’t money”. She had to call someone over when I insisted.
One time I gave my kids their allowance in twos. It became a thing after the very young one said “I love giving two dollar bills to clerks who are less than twenty years old! They get confused, and it’s so much fun to watch them…”
I had no idea that a preschooler would even know exactly how old someone was, let alone keep track of who’s a teenager.
I once paid for a movie ticket with a number of Susan B Anthony silver dollars. The young man at the register looked at the coins closely and asked “Is this American money?”
The town where I lived in the 00s had a factory that at least once gave their employees a Christmas bonus that included a roll of Sacajawea dollars. Those too were all over the place there.
When my brother’s kids were little, he got a pack of $2 bills, and that was their Tooth Fairy money.
I was working at my first restaurant job when those came out in 1979, and people thought they were fake then, too! They looked too much like quarters to be otherwise accepted.
Much more recently, I bought a bag of sewing patterns at an estate sale, and while examining them for possible resale, found a grand total of about $80 in cash, vintage 1984. The teenage grocery store cashier asked me if they were real. (Had I found that money at the sale, I would have given it to the people running it.)
Colorado does something interesting with $2 bills. (PDF)
And I understand it’s been done in other jurisdictions at other times.
Short version, it’s a state health online survey that you can get selected for. Your invitation to participate comes with a $2 bill as a pre-emptive thank you for your effort (took about 20 minutes to click through). Nice enough gimmick.
I started using twos many years ago. I found out that waitresses took notice of customers who left twos. Many said they save every two dollar bill and one dollar coin they get for their grandson, granddaughter, nephew or niece. It was a way of forcing them to save part of their tips. Some were “mock mad” at me since their entire tip had to be given away.
Some bank tellers would save all the twos they got for me, then I found out that one bank would order any quantity I wanted, all mint, bound and in serial number order. Then it became too easy to get them.
I stop in the bank before poker games and ask about twos. The tellers joke around with me, and last time the manager came out and said “You DO know we could just order those for you?” I replied that no, that would defeat the hunting/gathering sense of searching them out.
“It’s all about the Jeffersons, ba-by!”
How did they notice? The series number is awfully tiny on currency and some of it is in circulation a very long long time. In my Where’s George account I have 40 bills* before 1990, two of them 1963.
*Admittedly out of 19,000.
I had a thread years ago about dollar coins I received as payback for a loan. I wasn’t amused.
I’ve been carrying one around with me for the longest time so, because of the OP, I just decided to take it out and give it a real look. It’s gone! I can only hope that I forgot that I took it out and put it in a drawer where I keep souvenir coins and such from trips I’ve taken, otherwise I must have accidentally used it! Yes, I know it can be replaced, but I’ve had it a long time.