My wife comes from Lawrenceville, a rural Midwestern town. She admits her community has always been rife with gossip. Tales there have been so pronounced that she and I became convinced every rumor on the planet began there. No matter it be in Moscow, Tokyo, Tel Aviv or wherever, we were sure they started in Lawrenceville.
I thought of that last week when I heard banks, ATMs and other financial institutions would soon stop accepting $50 bills. There was no explanation. Just that the denomination was going away. This had Lawrenceville written all over it.
I consider myself to have a fairly good handle on things involving coins, currency, stamps and similar collectibles. That’s what I write about. So, this was news to me. And, it needed checking. I contacted a friend at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing....
Turns out, this was also news to them. The $50 bill has been a Federal Reserve staple for 110 years. First issued by the Fed in 1914, the notes are still widely-used in commerce. In 2022 alone, over 756 million were printed and distributed.
Collectors like them because of their history and stoic image of Civil War-great, Ulysses Grant. Today, some early $50 bills in top condition sell for thousands of dollars.
Perhaps the only place they may not be so welcome is in Las Vegas. Some gamblers consider a $50 bill unlucky. A few casinos purposefully don’t stock them. It’s been rumored mobster and Las Vegas founder Bugsy Siegal had a large wad of $50 bills on him when he was assassinated in a hail of bullets. At least, that’s the word in Lawrenceville.
As I mentioned a while back, paper currency is making an impressive come-back due to restaurants and other retailers adding a hefty fee of up to four-percent when a credit card is used for payment. That also means people are taking a closer look at the paper money they handle.
Our history with paper money dates to the earliest colonial days. In the 1700s, prominent colonists including signers of the Declaration of Independence personally signed each paper banknote. I say “paper.” Those notes actually contained a heavy percentage of cotton fiber. Consequently, many have not disintegrated and survive nicely to this day. In prime condition, those notes can be especially collectible and valuable, particularly if a famous colonist signed it.
Our fascination for and love of currency has led to some interesting nomenclature. For instance, a dollar has always been known as a “buck.” That term comes from when, several hundred years ago, a skin from a male deer or “buck” was worth a dollar. So, a dollar was a buck.
A five-dollar bill used to be known as a “fin.” It is said that’s due to the German/Yiddish term for five being “finnf.” The ten-dollar bill has long been called a “sawbuck.” That’s because of the prominent Roman numeral “X” on many early ten-dollar notes. On the bills, the “X” looked much like a sawhorse used in carpentry. Hence, sawbuck.
Ten-dollar bills are also often called “Hamiltons” thanks to the portrait of Alexander Hamilton on the front. A twenty is known as a “Jackson” for the same reason. Even though Hamilton and Ben Franklin (on the $100 bill) never made it to the Oval Office, when someone has loads of paper money they’re said to have “a lot of dead presidents.”
Thanks to mobsters in the 1920s and ‘30s, our $100 bill has been referred to as a “C-Note.” Some early $100 bills featured a large “C” in their design – referring to the Latin word “centum” meaning one hundred. It’s also the root of our word for a penny or “cent.”
Annually, the US frequently prints more $100 bills than any other denomination. Around the world, our $100 bill is still king. When drug lord El Chapo was captured, it’s said he had over $200 million – all in $100 bills. There are surely similar stashes of other scoundrels.
Because many of those notes in stockpiles are the older variety, it’s possible the US government may someday demonetize previous $50’s and $100’s requiring them to be redeemed for the new design. Perhaps that’s the origin of the recent gossip.
Drug kingpin or otherwise, whomever holds a giant hoard of either large denomination note will have a lot of explaining to do. I can only imagine how that will stoke the Lawrenceville rumor mill.
For more collecting information and advice, log on to: http://prexford.com/.