Lets day you find $100 in coins and cash in very good condition hidden away in an old barn and it’s not Confederate money. What is the maximum age that the found money can and still be currently spendable US currency?
there isn’t any but you might have a problem if its one of those pre civil war notes that’s still expecting to be paid out in real gold…
I’m going to go out on a limb and say 240 years.
United States currency is legal tender in perpetuity. Although if you found $100 in coins and cash in very good condition from 240 years ago, I’d advise you to take it to a coin dealer, as it is probably worth considerably more than its face value to collectors.
The gold certificates won’t be redeemed for gold and the silver certificates won’t be redeemed for silver, but they’ll still be accepted for their face value.
But, yeah. Take it to a coin dealer instead of a bank.
I think all old currency is legal except for the 1933 $20 gold coin (it was never
officially released and therefore not legal to own).
While it’s still legal tender, you might have trouble using a half penny to purchase something.
I believe this is correct, but you may want to send a scholarly cite to the Board’s vocal Libertarian who has asserted that all paper money fails, and seems to use the U.S. Civil War greenback as his example.
Very simplified version:
Any US minted coin (including commemorative issues) is a legal face value coin and if someone is willing to accept it at face value you may spend it. Some places may place a limit on how much “change” (including things like Ikes) you may deposit at one time and much of it (from 2-cent pieces to pre-1965 silver issues) are worth much more as a collectible. But they are still legal coins.
Currency gets a little trickier - any notes issued by the Federal government are still legal tender including “silver certificates” and large sized notes. Most well-worn notes issued after 1935 are pretty much that – face value. There are enough exceptions to make it worth checking but I wouldn’t quit my day job to do so. Banks will almost always accept them but some stores may balk; some react as “fake” when checked with the standard pens cashiers keep to detect counterfeit.
(For a wedding in my family a few years back we gave the bride and groom $800 in $2, most silver certificates — don’t ask long story.)
What collectors call “broken bank notes” - paper money issued by individual banks prior to the Civil War are NOT legal tender. They were issued locally and had no real backing; which is a reason so many of the issuing banks failed. Some have great collectors value so don’t throw them away ---- but don’t take any to the local mall. Unless there is a coin collector’s shop inside.
Also NOT legal tender (IIRC) are US Fractional Notes issued during the American Civil War as a sort of small change. Most were by the USPS and again have collectible value even well worn. Just not legal tender.
US postage stamps are all still good for postage at face value … I used to buy old unused stamps from my local stamp dealer at a 10% markup and plaster my envelopes with them … they all got delivered … I had more of a problem breaking up new souvenir sheets and trying to use the individual stamps … some of them got returns as insufficient postage …
I’ve seen S&W Green Stamps used on cover in shops … meh …
Pre-Civil War U.S. stamps are NOT good for postage; in 1861, the Postmaster General demonetized them to prevent post offices in the Confederacy from selling the substantial stocks they held to raise money for the South. Every U.S. stamp issued since August 1861 is still valid for postage, though automated canceling machines won’t usually “see” the stamps and the envelopes will be kicked out for manual processing. (Modern stamps, which in the U.S. means issued after about 1963, use luminescent paper and/or ink to make them visible under UV light to the cancelers.)
19th- and early-20th-century issues in general are all worth well more than face value anyway.
For stamps issued after about 1930, it is pretty easy to buy them unused at discounts below face value; shop around at local stamp dealers and you’ll find entire sheets of 1960s-70s-80s stamps at 50-75% of face value.
This wording doesn’t make sense here. Coins and notes are both types of currency.
To collectors/numismatists and put fast and dirty: usually metal are coins or tokens and paper is currency.
I’m doubtful of this. If this were really a significant thing, you would expect them to have been cleared out long ago by people and companies that do a lot of mailing.
When was the last time you licked the back of a US Postage Stamp?
We need to add this to the “List of Things Young’un’s Will Never Do”
Also - wind your watch and NEVER place it stem-down on the dresser.
How many people even use stamps now? With online bill pay, email, Facebook, and whatnot, I don’t think I’ve used a stamp in at least a year.
You can doubt it if you want but there is so much of that stuff hitting the market as stamp collectors die off that you can get obsolete postage sometimes as cheap as 70% of face or less. The shop I used to work for sold “postage packs” of $11 face for $10. It made for fun Christmas cards and people used them for resumes. Lets face it, any stamp is an oddity these days; a couple old stamps are sure to get your letter opened and looked at.
Stamp businesses will do this, but what law firm, for example, wants to send out an envelope that bears five different stamps adding up to 47 cents? Those cheap stamps are going to be 10 and 12 and 15 cents if you’re lucky; if not, you’ll be licking an awful lot of five- and eight-centers. It’s not a professional image, so few businesses are interested.
Do a search on ebay, e.g., for “discount postage”; you’ll find many many auctions in the range of 70% of face value, with free shipping. Visit a local stamp dealer, and shorn of the auction fees and shipping expense, they’ll be cheaper yet.
What happened was that collectors laid aside whole sheets of stamps back in the 50s and 60s, thinking that someday they’d be worth something. That day never arrived; thousands upon thousands of sheets were laid aside, and with the decline of stamp collecting as a hobby and the decline of mail generally, who wants this stuff? Supply and demand: big supply and low demand = falling prices.
Who will open it and for what reason? Although I am sure they will occasionally open letters, it is supposedly illegal and I thought they needed a warrant. Just for using old stamps? Doesn’t make sense.
A Russian I know told me that when his grandmother died (a long time ago) they found $1000 in US bills in her mattress (or something like that). They were so old, they were the large size (size of IBM punch cards if you recall them). He took them to the nearest US consulate which was happy to issue him new bills in the same amount. Of course, they had probably lost 90% of their buying power, but that is a different question.
IMO kopek’s suggestion was to use old stamps to mail your resume to a recruiter. The stamps will be a novelty and will get your envelope opened instead of simply thrown out.
I’m not sure that’d be effective except in a narrow range of company sizes. But I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant.
Wife and I mail about 5 things a month. Month in and month out. Using conventional postage stamps, albeit the kind you peel off a backing sheet, not the kind you lick. Nor the kind you self-print.
This is in addition to email and electronic bill pay. There are still a few things that just require paper.
:smack: Something got lost in translation. I meant that the people you send the resume or letter to will open it; not the USPS or some government agency. Although the mileage of your government could vary. If you are sending something to a place that receives a lot of mail, it is one way of getting some attention and I can attest to it working in that fashion at times.
Pretty much. Five years ago or 10 it was a better ploy; 20 years ago terrific. But it still has its fallback uses in different situations.