Let’s say I found a bunch of post-Civil War $20 paper notes in a forgotten-about safe somewhere. Could I take them to a bank and exchange them for 1:1 new notes? Or would this necessitate a phone call to some federal office? Would they have more value as collectors’ items? Or would they be worthless?
All Federal Reserve notes dating back to 1914 are considered legal tender, though you might have difficulty getting a really old one accepted at Burger King.
Even gold certificates are valid as money, though they can’t be redeemed for gold anymore.
So are you just SOL if your note predates 1914?
So much for having it your way.
mmm
These are Confederate banknotes.
From 60-795. US dollars 
$20 notes? Could be worth a few thousand dollars each, depending on year and condition. See here.
If they were issued before 1914, they’re not federal reserve notes; they’re one of the many other issuances that occurred, on various legal bases, before the establishment of the Federal Reserve System.
A Russian I knew found a stash of $100 bills, vintage 1900, in his grandmother’s mattress when she died (in what was still Leningrad). He took them to a US consulate who were happy to exchange them for modern bills. There was no US bank or Federal Reserve, so I don’t know who the issuer was. When he visited and was being paid US$5000, he asked me if I could arrange for 50 $100 bills that he could take back to the Soviet Union. My bank was happy to oblige. I did explain why.
Here’s the Straight Dope from the Federal Reserve.
All U.S. currency remains legal tender, regardless of when it was issued.
That includes silver and gold certificates and U.S. Notes (aka “red seal bills”) However, since only Federal Reserve notes have been issued since 1971, the others are probably worth more as collector’s items than their face value.
I think it would depend on whether the notes were backed by the federal government, or were private bank notes.
There is a small group of countries which have a policy that the notes issued by the government are always valid. The US, the UK, Canada and Australia are the main ones.
So if the notes you’ve found were issued by the federal gov’t (eg the original green backs from the Civil War), you could likely redeem them for their face value.
If they were issued by a private bank, not likely.
Although as others have commented, their collector value likely exceeds their face value.
Literally in a mattress. I guess it’s not just a figure of speech.
Any paper money that old you should DEFINITELY take to a numismatic store before a bank.
It’s ironic that there used to be a trope in TV shows in the 1960s where someone would find a stash of old banknotes and be thrilled, until they discovered that they were Confederate and therefore worthless. In fact, after seeing so many such scenes as a child and knowing little of US history, I thought that the word “Confederate” meant “fake” or “worthless”. Now it seems that most Confederate banknotes are worth much more than face value.
When I was growing up my mom had a book of poems titled Best Loved Poems of the Americans People. It didn’t mean all the authors were American, just that they had at least once been popular. We both loved “Grandmother’s Old Arm Chair” about a discovery the protagonist in the poem made.
Fun song. Thanks for posting it.
Yes literally in a mattress. To change the subject, my grandfather once showed me the spot in his basement where he had buried $1000 and concreted over it. When he died in 1954 I told my father and uncle about this and they dug it out.
About 30 years ago, on a Saturday morning, I went to the bank drive-thru and cashed a check for $200. The Teller gave me 10 $20 bills. When I got home, I got them out of envelop and saw that they didn’t look right. I looked at them more closely and they were all were printed in 1936 with consecutive serial numbers.
I immediately set them aside and went back to the bank and cashed another $200 check,
I figured someone emptied out their (or a dead relative’s) safe deposit box (or similar).
They are currently in my safe deposit box.
Right, I am not sure about Continental paper currency (still would have quite a bit of collector value. But everything since it was the United States of America.
And someday, the cycle will repeat.