Did I see what I think I saw??? :eek:
I was at the post office when i noticed a transparent-type envelope sitting upright (propped up) against the wall behind the counter. In the envelope, there appeared to be a million dollar bill in this envelope! In the center, was a picture of the Statue of Liberty, and if I counted right, I saw 6 zeros! The coloring looked like any other bill. Yet, I wonder why the post office would have it out in the open like this. (No, it was not meant to be a display or anything like that.)
I’ll probably never get to know one :mad: intimately, but can anyone confirm what this was? Surely some coin buffs must be up on this stuff. a) Is there really a MM note? b) Was this the real thing?
The maximum US currency bill is the $100,000 U.S. note. That could not, however, have been what you saw, since (a) it is only used for transfers between Federal Reserve branches and (b) it has Woodrow Wilson on it, and even in a dim light he would be hard to mistake for the Statue of Liberty. The $10,000 bill has, IIRC, Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln and A. Johnson and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He looks even less like Lady Liberty, having close resemblance to what would happen if you did recombinant DNA cloning on a mixture of Chester Alan Arthur and the guy from the Monopoly game.
My hunch is that it was a Treasury Bill, a Federal investment item which is often delivered through the U.S.P.S. (registered and insured!) and which I believe can be found in very high denominations. Would our resident fiscal-expert moderator care to confirm or rebut this possibility?
Polycarp, a treasury bill would make more sense. I vaguely recall hearing something about the largest bill at one time or another. Maybe I’m crazy, but weren’t there once larger denominations, and circa 1980’s they stopped printing 'em? Or, was it all just a dream?
That’s why he makes the big bucks! Don’t kid yourself, all bucks are the same size!
They stopped printing everything over $100 (or perhaps $500), but still use the existing stocks of $1000, $10,000, and $100,000 (there are only a few of the last – 20 is what I recall).
Maybe we could start a Bring Back Big Bills campaign?
The US Treasury stopped making the large bills because:[list=1][li]wire transfers became the method of exchange[*]drug dealers and other criminal enterprises were using them for easy of transport of their illicit funds.[/list=1][/li]Even now, the Treasury is contemplating not making the $100 bill anymore.
The real solution for the latter is to make $100 coins weighing about 1 oz (28 g) each. Can you imagine a drug runner trying to smuggle 62 lbs (28 kg) of coins for each million dollars?
Sorry. All my fiscal stuff is blips on a screen. I don’t even use currency to get my dry cleaning anymore. So I have no idea what it is.
That said, T-bills, bonds, and notes are also usually blips on a screen. There’s an occasional dowager who still wants the certificate, but most often the treasury or the brokerage simply puts the customer’s name and position into the computer and bang, you own it.
I’ll WAG that it was a promotional bill of some type. Either “Thanks for all your hard work, here’s a million bucks, hee hee” or “You may already have won.”
