If I’m not mistaken, most people get their cash from an ATM or a teller window at a bank. Most ATMs don’t dispense $1 bills, so you’re most likely to get new ones at a bank. I used to see it all the time when I was in college and had a paycheck to cash. You can even ask the teller for crisp bills if you like. (Most people do that for birthday cards). In retail, most of the cash you receive as change came from a purchase earlier in the day. You’re unliekly to see newer bills unless you shop early in the day, or sometimes just after a new drawer is put into the register.
As a pre-teen, I remember reading that blind folks fold the different denominations differently. Obviously they need someone sighted to tell them what the bills originally are…
Or do they? the Minneapolis Fed suggests that the new bills could be read with “a convenient scanner.”
By “new $1 bills,” do you mean those that read “SERIES 2001” and have Paul O’Neill’s signature on them?
I’ve never seen one until a couple of days ago.
One of my college roommates, whose father was a banker, had a high school summer job working in the bank print shop (printing checks and deposit slips, etc.) He used to buy a stack of new one dollar bills from the tellers and take them to the print shop and “pad” them – put glue on one edge so they stuck together like a desk calendar. Then when he bought something he’d take out his pad of bills and peel them off one by one to pay for it. Apparently the new bills are shipped with a blank sheet between every five or ten bills so his pad included blanks also. He said that between the padded bills and the blanks he got a lot of funny looks from shopkeepers and his money was usually scrutinized pretty carefully.
It was kind of funny in a high-school nerdy way.
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As dtilque said, if you want dollar coins, just go to a bank. A roll will set you back (temporarily, between the time you hand them your currency and the time they hand you the rolled coins) a hefty $25.
I just picked up a roll today.
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I also have here a dollar bill which says “Series 1995.” Pretty old, for a dollar bill. Looks pretty beat up, too. I have a 20 from 1996. Man, I have a lot of old money…
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I’m confused. There are newly designed bills AND new coins out? Which is the new currency (i.e. which is going to stick around, and which is just out for fun?). Are the americans following Canada and getting their own set of loonies and twoonies (though the name is OURS!! 
)? If that’s the case, then within the year you’ll be seeing them often enough for them to be commonplace. I’m already finding the old $10s funny here, and thats only been since the fall. I can’t wait for the rest of the money to be distributed, so that the cash will match again hehe
The newly designed currency began with the one-hundred dollar bill in March of 1996. It has since progressed down to the fifty in October 1997, twenty in September 1998, ten in May 2000, and the five, also in May 2000 (U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing). There are, IIRC, currently no plans to release a redesigned one.
There are one dollar coins which were first released on January 27, 2000 (U.S. Mint). These are the “Golden Dollars” or “Sackies” (named for Sacagawea, who is pictured on the obverse of the coin). These coins are gold in color, and the same diameter, though a little thicker than the Susan B. Anthony coin, which they were meant to replace.
As far as anyone knows, there are no plans to take either the one dollar bill, nor the one dollar coin out of circulation. Therefore, that and the fact that the coins have been out for over two years and still aren’t in widespread circulation leads one to believe that until something changes, nothing’s going to change.
Well, I think the solution is obvious. They need to make 1’s, 5’s, 10’s, 20’s, 50’s, and 100’s out of the same stuff as 2’s. :D:D
This probably would have been good information to have included in the original post, but I just remembered.
When I got said new $1 bills, I took them to the bank to deposit them. The teller asked where I’d gotten them. She’d never seen crisp $1 bills with consecutive serials before.
Bizzare.
My wife got a pad of $1’s like this and she doesn’t know your roommate. I’m fairly sure you can get a pad like that at any bank. He was probably pulling your leg.
that’s weird. when i get change from the bank at work, we get bundles of 50 singles at a time. about half of the time they are all new, and consecutive. if ya want, i’ll sell them to ya, $75 for package.