My favourite bank note that I’ve actually seen in person has to be the $50 note from the “Scenes of Canada” seriesthat was circulating in the 1970s and early 1980s. Sure, William Lyon Mackenzie King on the front is the definition of stodgy, but the scene of the Dome from the RCMP Musical Rideon the back is the best of any note.
I liked all the bills in Canada’s 1954 series, but out of all of those (and bills in subsequent series), I liked the 1954 $10 bill best. The reverse showed a wonderful view of the Rocky Mountains by a lake, and if you looked very carefully, you’d see a tiny cabin on the shore of the lake.
Heck, Canada’s 1954 series was so beautiful that Sha-Na-Na did a song about it:
Another vote for the old Morgan. I semi-collected coins as a kid and have quite a few generic well circulated coins of old. Someday it will all have to go, of course, but I’ll keep my Morgan to the end.
My mother worked as a cashier back in the 60s and would get silver dollars from customers. She’d swap them out with her own paper bills and save them in a big jar. Then she’d spend those on the next trip to Reno. To see a jar of hundreds of silver dollars was pretty cool then, would be even more amazing now.
I would say quarters. They’re not my favorite anymore, but they’re the only denomination I felt any sort of special favoritism for because of my college days. My college dorm had coin-operated washers and dryers that only accepted quarters, so during my college years, a quarter was the most valuable denomination out there. If I wanted food or clothing or something, I knew I could get it using a bank card, but if I wanted to have clean clothes, only a stack of quarters would do.
I like dimes. I think because they are little. Also because I have fond memories of sorting out dimes with my grandfather and looking for ones that were actually silver.
I still keep about $20 in quarters in my car. Whenever I get a quarter, it goes in the center console of the car. Used to be for parking and tolls, but you don’t even need quarters for a lot of meters anymore, and the EZPass takes care of tolls. Now I really only collect them there out of habit. At least I always know where to find one.
The $20 bill. It’s convenient, large enough to pay for small items by itself, it doesn’t take that many of them to cover higher costs, and they are readily accepted everywhere while larger bills may not be.
I like the twenty as well for all the reasons cited. As an aside, I wish that “Eagle grasping the moon” that’s on the Ike buck had been put on the Kennedy half because, well, you know.
Tens, fives, and twos seem to be the most convenient denominations for the purchases I make most frequently and are usually what I have the most of in my wallet. I think the $2 bill has about the best design of currently circulating U.S. bills.
But my favorites are the 1896 Educational Series silver certificates. We haven’t really had such artwork on our money since.
Bills, meh, none are really all that special. Coins are more fun.
Since they pop up so rarely anymore, I get a thrill when I find a bicentennial half-dollar, the ones with Independence Hall on the back.
Other favorites: the Walking Liberty half dollar, the original Sacagawea dollar (Glenna Goodacre, the artist who designed it, is a local, and she spoke at my college graduation).
500 pesetas notes were quite rare and I liked the color. The characters were also interesting: the one representing Basque painter Ignacio Zuloaga was based on a self-portrait, that of Galician poetess Rosalía de Castro on one of the few portraits we have of her. There was an older version with Isabel I of Castille, but I don’t recall ever encountering one in the wild.
I’m weirdly fond of the USA’s Bicentiennial Quarter (the version with the drummer on the back, from 1976). You get them in change just often enough that they’re a Cool Weird Thing, but not worth collecting.
