On this past Tuesday night’s episode of the excellent WB show, Angel, the titular vampire-with-a-soul came into possession of a satchel full of cash, the fruit of a 1952 bank robbery.
Angel and his minions kept the money, unless I missed something.
My question is this: If a large number of Series 1948-1952 bills suddenly began circulating in one city, would this set off any red flags at the Federal Reserve, FBI and Secret Service? Most bills from that era would long since have been removed from circulation and destroyed, after all.
Would there be an investigation, and perhaps an effort to match the bills with an unsolved robbery from the money’s time period?
Or would anyone even notice? Angel is fiction, of course, but surely there’ve been real cases like this from time to time.
Until the change in currency last year, I don’t think there’d be much different between a 1952 bill and a 1997 bill, except for the obvious (date, signatures, etc.)
I think one would have to be careful not to spend a large amount in one place, because one wouldn’t want to attract attention, I suppose.
Well, sure. What I was wondering was whether there were any standard procedures for such “attention.” Do bank tellers routinely report suspiciously old bills to someone?
Oh, bite me, pink boy.
Yeesh, four messages in this thread and three of them are mine. Okay, I’ll shut up now.
Absolutely, possitively, unequivocally, no. Tellers do not have the time to check series dates on the currency they handle. I know of no brand of automated cash counter that checks for series date, either.
The Fed also does not track currency for the purpose you described. Some of the problems with that scenario would be:
Currency, unlike coin, does not get a new series year every calendar year. Dates on currency plates are only changed when there are other more major design changes made, like a new Treasurer signature.
Cash is vitually untraceable. There would be no easy way to determine if the cash came from a bank robbery or Uncle Hermit’s mattress.
Even if one could prove the cash was from a robbery, what good would it do? The cash probably passed through 1000’s of hands in the mean time. Not to mention the fact that the statute of limitations would have long since run out, making prosecution impossible.
When were silver certificates retired? After 1952, I believe, since it happened in my lifetime and I’m not that old!! (Well, I was born in 1954.)
They were not astonishingly different from our current currency (get it?) but they were different enough that it wouldn’t take more than a passing glance to notice you had an old bill. I don’t suppose the tellers would take the time but if, for some reason, someone got suspicious about a lot of old money turning up it wouldn’t be too hard to alert people to be on the lookout.
The public had until late 1968 to redeem silver certificates for an equivalent amount of silver. After that date, youcould still spend your silver certs for cash but not demand actual silver.
Our large Ohio coin shop purchases 1000’s of $1 silver certs every month from the public.
The bulk of the money in a 1952 robbery would have been in larger bills($10,$20, perhaps 50’s, 100’s). They would have had been dated either 1950 or 1934(well, OK, some could be 1928).
We also get in these old series bills every day. They are worth a premium if still in crisp new condition. In circulated condition, we essentially spend them.
Hey, samclem. Could you help me here? I have a nice, crisp $10 bill from early in this century (maybe it is 1928). It looks as legal as any other $10 bill, but printed on the front is the name and address of The First National Bank of Mercedes, Texas.
Any education on this subject?