I found references on Wikipedia for the $500, $1000, and $10,000 bank notes, but it did not mention how many of the $100,000 bills were remaining. Another site through Google mentioned that the remaining ones are in museums only, but there must be a private collector somewhere with one.
Also, does anyone know of an instance where one sold? What’s the going price for one of these?
I don’t know if they still have them, but The Mint in Las Vegas had $1,000,000 on display in $100,000 bills. Mario Puzo, in his book on Las Vegas, claimed that these wrere among the very few $100,000 bills in private hands and, for that matter, still in existence.
Supposedly the $100,000, unlike the lower denominations, were only printed to facilitate transactions between Federal Reserve banks, and did not pass into circulation geanerally. Samclem probably would have more information on this. However, apparently a small number of them did move into private hands, as demonstrated by Cal’s post. But there would be very few of them.
Sounds a lot like the display at the Horshoe, only that was $10,000 bills:
The 100k note was a federal reserve note that was only used within the federal reserve bank and never in public circulation and was not a “bill”. Large value bearer bonds were closer to “bills” than federal reserve notes.
If my memory hasn’t totally gone, I think that there are no $100,000 notes left out there, and almost certainly not in private collections.
Again, from memory, you’re dealing with two things here: the Treasury issued bills in 1928 which went up only to the $10,000 note. The $100,000 note only was issued in 1934,as a gold certificate, after Roosevelt took us off the gold standard. I’ve seen the Treasury Dept. specimen sheet at a coin show(I think). But I seriously doubt that any are known. I believe that all of the $5000 and $10000 notes in collectors hands are Federal Reserve Notes, rather than Gold Certificates. All the high value gold certifcates were removed and destroyed.
There was one in the Smithsonian when I was a kid. I presume that it is still there.