Just to clarify, a bank can redeem any bill that is “clearly more than 50% present” and has at least one complete serial number*. Nowhere does the Treasury specify “51%”, but that has become the default description. Banks do have a template that is bill sized and divided into a grid of 50 squares. If the teller can put the grid over the bill and count 26 full squares and one full serial number, that’s generally good enough. The Treasury can redeem bills with less than half and/or less than one full serial number, but there are additional hoops to jump through. I have seen them redeem currency so damaged in a fire as to be barely recognizable as cash. The customer didn’t get 100% redeemed, but a vast majority. It was quite impressive.
*Actually, a bank can redeem any bill, including those that don’t meet the above guidelines, they just take on the risk of loss if the Treasury decides not to replace it.
This is because of a previously common scam where someone would cut all 4 corners off 2 bills and glue large denomination corners to a smaller denomination bill. They would pass the phony (or try) with the plan of also redeeming the large bill, sans corners, at face value somewhere else. This scam is one reason bank tellers are taught to count cash by looking at the portrait instead of the numbers. You’ll probably have to have a very good reason that your bill is missing the 4 corners in order to convince the bank you are not a scammer.
Recently some stores in my area have been putting up notices that they won’t accept a bill larger than a twenty. Apparently there have been some counterfeits showing up.
That I would understand, but this bill is only missing one corner. Now, it may have been used in a scam, but my wife received it in change from a store and didn’t notice until too late. I know about the corner scam, but this bill does look like it’s torn, not cut.
A while back, a man was telling me about the fire at his old house, and that against the firefighters’ advice, he ran back into the house to grab a jar with his life savings of $900. Fortunately, he wasn’t burned or overcome by smoke, but I told him that if anything like this would ever happen to him again, the money could be replaced and by whom.
(As an aside, remember that scene in “To Kill A Mockingbird” where a house catches fire, and the neighbors all run in to throw furniture out the window?)
A bar I frequent had a counterfeit twenty on display*****. I was shocked by how bad it was. The paper was way off, making it obvious.
Someone came in on a busy night, ordered a $5 draft, and left with $15 profit. I guess he then went to another dimly lit, busy bar and rinse-repeat. All that stress. It hardly seems worth it.
*****they never called the cops. Nobody remembered who paid with the bad bill, it was discovered at the end of the night.
Not everyone who hands you a counterfeit bill is aware that it is a counterfeit. That is, after all, the point - to make something that will pass as a real bill in casual interactions even if it won’t stand up to stringent inspection.
Some are, of course - we occasionally have a known bad bill passer show up. More often, either we discover it when counting cash at the end/beginning of the day, or it’s in the hands of someone who plausibly didn’t know it was a fake.