“Who’s Salmon P. Chase, you ask? U. S. Supreme Court Justice, 1864-73. Guess it goes to show, you can never tell who’s collectible.”
Actually, there’s more to it than that. Here’s the story: Before Salmon P. Chase became a Supreme Court Justice, Chief Justice in fact, he was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury. While serving in this position, he oversaw the issuance of legal tender paper currency. He worked out many of the details of its creation and also helped carry the legislation, known collectively as the Legal Tender Acts, through congress. This was essentially the first permanent national currency in America. Chase also had great political aspirations (he was hoping to nab the Republican nomination himself, but lost it to Lincoln), and so he put his own face on a number of bills as a way of self-promotion. I confess I don’t know for sure whether this is how he ended up on the $10,000 bill, or if he was placed there in honor of playing such a large role in the creation of currency as we know it, but I imagine it’s one of the two.
In an interesting, and ironic, side note, as Chief Justice, Chase later authored the opinion for *Hepburn v. Griswold (1870)
*, which declared parts of the Legal Tender Acts, which he authored, unconstitutional. This decision would have effectively ended the production of American paper currency had the decision not been overruled a year later.
P.S. In your list of people pictured on large bills you forgot the $100,000 bill which features Woodrow Wilson.
Chase and his daughter, the ill-fated Kate Chase Sprague, were both major characters in Gore Vidal’s Lincoln.
Chase also wrote a famous funny endearing father-daughter note. When Kate announced she was going to name her newborn son in his honor he told her (paraphrasing) “Don’t. I appreciate the thought, but one member named for a damned fish is enough for a family”.
And only the $500, $1000 and $100,000 bills have relatively plain backs with ornate writing. The $5000 bill has the painting Washington Resigning His Commision and the $10,000 has a scene of Pilgrims. The $100,000 bill was used only within the government and is an “orangeback” rather than a greenback.
Actually, all of the large-sized bills originally had fancy designs, then switched to text, as you can see on the website of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The $500 had DeSoto discovering the Mississippi River, and the $1000 had an eagle.
Is currency above a $100 bill legal tender? If for some reason my grandpa had left me a stack of $500 bills, for instance, could I peel 4 to pay for a $1999.99 computer?
For that matter, do McKinley $500 bills have any collectability at above face value?
On the other end of the spectrum, I heard there is a, fairly useless, as of yet unminted coin that is nonetheless officially in existence (meaning it could be minted if they wanted to) called the mill (equivalent to .001 cents), is this just an urban legend or is there a president/scene combination for this coin floating around somewhere I can see?
Also, I never knew there were fractional notes. I want a few now… goes to eBay
The Coinage Act of 1792 states that a mille is 1/1000th of a dollar, but as far as I can tell doesn’t authorize minting a coin in that amount, though I could be wrong.
No Mill coin has ever been issued by the United States, but it is, technically, a US unit of currency, alongside the Cent, the Dime, the Dollar, and the Eagle. Some prices are quoted in mills; I specifically remember the IBM 3800 mainframe laser printer (which printed several pages per second) in the 70s, which included a surcharge per linear foot of paper printed in its monthly rental, which surcharge was quoted in mills.
The Chases, ambitious father and even more ambitious daughter, are also prominently featured in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s excellent recent nonfiction book on Lincoln’s Cabinet, Team of Rivals.
The mill is an example of “money of account” used only in calculating and recording accounts (seen these days in the US/Canada almost exclusively in setting tax rates and gas prices), as distinct from “money of exchange” which is actual coins/bills minted/printed for use in the physical exchange of payments. Some countries (e.g. New Zealand) have stopped minting the 1 cent coin (or local equivalents) but still use the cent as a money of account, with final calculated prices unchanged for non-cash (cheque/credit card/debit card) purchases but rounded up or down to the nearest actual coin for cash purchases.