About three hours ago, the question popped into my head. Actually, it was spawned by received a dollar bill from a bank which had been torn clear in half, and then masking-taped together (with no great care, either- the bill looked like it was suffering a compound fracture.)
I asked for another bill from the teller (most of the one’s I keep in my pocket end up in a finicky Coke machine)- no problem.
So here it is: when a bill has reached the end of its life cycle (how is a bill’s life cycle defined, anyways?), does it just eventually fall into the hands of someone at the Fed, who hand-removes it? Or are they removed by date scan?
Are banks at all encouraged to remove these obviously defective bills, or no?
When I was a bank teller we were asked to put aside severely worn or damaged bills. I don’t know what happened to them after they left our branch, though.
Here in Australia (back in the pre-ATM days), I remember seeing a little “teller use only” section on bank deposit slips. As well as spaces for the number of notes of each denomination, there was a little space marked “soiled notes”. So, I guess it’s up to the banks to remove old notes.
When I worked at a grocery store in the bookkeeping room, we deposited damaged money-bills and coins-with our regular deposits.
We had special envelopes labeled “Damaged Currency” for these deposits.We were told the bank sent them on to the Mint for recycling-don’t know if that’s true or not.
I got a slightly singed new $20 from an ATM a couple of weeks ago. It was stamped MUTILATED. I brought it back to the bank to get a different one because I didn’t want to argue with my local merchants over it so I asked the bank for a new one. They were a bit hesitant to do so.
The banks remove all bills that fail to meet a certain standard of wear, such as any tears, burns, or “fuzziness.” They get shipped back to the Treasury Department and burned. Twice in school (once in highschool, once in college) I saw the same video about how they make and destry US currency, including a scene of bales of bills being shoveled into a furnace, which is a really, really cool visual.
