So I just heard that a new $50 bill is going to be released in May. This one will actually feature some colors other then green and black. They say it’s to help thwart counterfeiters. But to me that doesn’t make any sense at all. Everytime a new bill comes out I have to think…If I were a counterfeiter I would just continue make the old style bills. An old style $20, $50, $100 is worth just as much as the news ones. It’s almost as if they think that all the people making fake bills will have to stop what their doing until they figure out how to make the new ones. The only way this would work is if they told everyone that the old ones would be not only taken out of circulation but also made invalid by a certain date. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. So is there any real reason for making new bills other then to just for a new look.
(Change last “.” to a “?”)<-Now it’s a GQ and not just a MPSIMS
Maybe once the new ones become established, people will look a bit longer at the old ones for novelty’s sake. And many eyes make it hard to hide blatant forgeries.
Eventually, the new bills will have replaced the old ones all but completely in active use, and only numismatists will be looking at the old ones regularly. And a bill freak can tell a forgery rather easily, most of the time.
Also, once the new bills have been in circulation for a while, a crisp, shiny, spanking-new old-style bill is going to stick out like a sore thumb and make people take a second look.
I would think that anyone could “age” a bill though, just by torturing it enough until it looked old enough to pass.
Besides, I get “old” bills at my shop all the time that look brand new, and turn out to be perfectly legitimate.
Bills do not last forever. The fact that they will no longer produce the old-style $50 note is enough to ensure that within a period of years it will disappear from circulation as tatty and damaged notes are progressively removed from circulation. After this point, old-style bills–while remaining legal tender–will warrant additional scrutiny sufficient to reduce forgeries.
That is pretty much what would happen, or at least it is exactly what has happened here in the UK every time a banknote undergoes a serious redesign (and this has happened quite a number of times); as soon as the new note is introduced, banks are instructed to remove the old ones from circulation (so they simply don’t recirculate any old-style notes), a deadline is set for some time later, when the notes should no longer be accepted as tender in shops (but may still be redeeemed at banks; later still, another deadline passes and the note is no longer redeemable at ordinary banks and must be returned to the issuing bank (the Bank Of England, in the case of English currency) for redemption.
There’s nothing to stop you keeping the old notes (indeed after a while they become interesting to collectors), but there comes a point where you can’t easily spend the old notes.
One of the things the US Treasury has been saying all along is that the old designs will be legal tender forever - older designs have never been recalled.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Just yesterday, my store received a $50 that was, I believe, a series 1934. Actually still looked pretty good considering it’s age. As far as I could tell it was real, and the bank certainly took it. Also as far what someone else said about aging the bills, all you’d really have to do it carry it around in your pocket for a little while and it should look just fine.
I didn’t know about that; seems like a bit of a hasty promise to me.
I understand that counterfiters just throw them into the washing machine…
I always questioned whether constantly changing the currency might not actually give counterfeiters an edge? When the new bills come out, adjusting to all the new things a person is supposed to look for in determining authentcity takes a little bit - isn’t that the perfect window of opportunity for a counterfeiter to step up to the plate?
Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way?
[Insert obvious joke here]
Well, let’s remember we’re talking about a decision of the US Government – they are probably taking into account that they got more useful things to do at the BPE or the Fed than to assign staff to screen the irate phone calls and letters from:
(a) The few people who may unearth in their back yard the $50,000 that crazy old Uncle Stu buried there in 1961, now worthless paper…
(b) The much, much larger segment of the American public who would view a recall of currency designs and or a mandate to replace your old notes with new as just more proof that The Black Helicopters are coming to get them, a prelude to all money being voided and replaced by The Mark Of The Beast.
Another important point is that a large amount of counterfeiting occurs in foreign countries, where old bills are most certainly not accepted as legal tender. In fact, even new style bills are usually either not accepted or discounted in value if torn, crumpled, dirty, etc. So a foreign forger would not be able to keep making the old bills; he’d have to switch to the newer, tougher to counterfeit bills to keep making a living.
I think you’re looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope.
Sure, the hope is that small-time operators will have more difficulty in making these new bills and that clerks at whatever stores that still accept fifties will find them easier to detect.
But in a world in which clerks accept $200 bills and give back $198 in change and people stroll into Wal-Mart with $1,000,000 bills - yes, both of these really happened - new watermarks are only a small part of the issue.
The real problem is that counterfeits are made in the millions: by the mob, by terrorist groups, and by rogue governments. These are not thrown into washing machines. They have to be laundered in the other sense.
And U.S. currency is a de facto standard all around the world, often more highly prized than local currencies. Being able to fund criminal enterprises with fake money is extremely useful.
I’m sure the Secret Service is far more concerned with making one $50 million bust than with a hundred clerks being fooled.
Yes, but if I’m not mistaken, “legal tender”, in the US, doesn’t mean that a shop owner, for instance, is obligated to accept the bill in payment, but only that it must be acccepted as a payment for already existing debts. If the banks remove the former bills from circualtion, they will quickly become rare (it doesn’t long for a given bill to end up in a bank), and people might soon be reluctant to accept these oddities as payment. Especially for a large amount, which could appear suspicious.
The system in France used to be similar to the UK system (and new bills were introduced on a regular basis), and the old bills dissapeared very quickly, long before they stopped to be a legal tender. They survived for some months, perhaps…
Don’t think so. After the first years, the amount of old bills which will come back to the central bank will be extremely limited, and not a concern. Old bills still in existence will be kept by collectors and will have a value higher than their facial value. Nobody is going to bring bak to the french central bank a 100 y.o. 100 francs notes and ask to be given some euros instead. They’ll keep it or sell it to a collector. And even if they actually do so, the low number of bills still existing insure that the amount which will have to be reimbursed will be minimal.
No, I mean it is a little self-limiting to assert “we will never do such-and-such”, when at some point in the future it might actually be beneficial to do it.