Seen the new $20 bills yet?

These things look really cool! They look a lot harder to counterfeit, which is the main point, obviously, but they really do look nice on top of it. Eventually, all of our old plain looking money may become a collector's item.

David <><

I use a debit card all the time. I rarely have folding money in my wallet. All paper money will become museum items fairly soon IMO.

I haven't seen the new funny money, yet. hehehe

I saw one yesterday. It really is kinda neat looking. It makes use of multiple foil colors, other peach and blue hues and the yellow 20's printed on the back are something else.

Other countries have been using mulitple colors to deter making funny money and and it's about time we did too.

Is there a certain date that the old bills are not going to be accepted at all? If not, what is to stop counterfeiters from making the old kind of bills, say 10-20 years from now and them still being accepted as legal tender? Also, what if a person has a stash of bills in the house that they are saving and they try to spend them 10-20 years from now? Or what if you lost a $100 bill somewhere in the house and you find it 10 years later? Will they still be accepted? This new money really brings up a lot of unanswered questions.

The old bills will most likely be honored well beyond our lifetimes.
The "older" bills from 20 years ago are still honored and even the Silver Certificates from the '30s are still being honored. Except for the money from the Confederacy I can't think of any US currency that isn't still considered legal tender.

I do wonder though if these new bills won't actually increase counterfeiting.
The treasury said that they're expecting to have to change the money every 7 years in order to stay ahead of the counterfeiters.
If there are going to be that many variations how many lazy people will just start honoring whatever's put before them?

over here you can always go to a bank and exchange out-dated or damaged notes for new ones /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

chamenos said: "over here you can always go to a bank and exchange out-dated or damaged notes for new ones"

Again, that goes back to my original question. If the old money is still going to be accepted, then what is to stop the counterfeiters from just counterfeiting the old bills instead of the new ones?

If the counterfeiters counterfeit the old bills instead of the new bills, then what is the point of making the new bills and our government spending 53 million dollars to "educate" the public about the new bills. Sounds to me like somebody high-up in government is probably getting some kind of major kickback for coming up with this nonsensical new money scheme.

Like GJW said, these new bills are likely to increase counterfeiting rather than decrease it.

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X-CalBR8 said:
Is there a certain date that the old bills are not going to be accepted at all? If not, what is to stop counterfeiters from making the old kind of bills, say 10-20 years from now and them still being accepted as legal tender? Also, what if a person has a stash of bills in the house that they are saving and they try to spend them 10-20 years from now? Or what if you lost a $100 bill somewhere in the house and you find it 10 years later? Will they still be accepted? This new money really brings up a lot of unanswered questions.

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The Federal Reserve and the banking institutions are the filters by which the old notes are removed from circulation. When old notes are cycled through your local Federal Reserve bank (surprising how often this happens) the old bills are exchanged for new, and the old are simply shredded. Old notes are still legal tender, but banks are notified to remove really old notes (like silver certificates) and are forbidden to put them back in circulation. Also any bill in a higer denomination than $100 that gets to a bank cannot be recirculated. All bills over $100 were officially withdrawn from circulation several years ago and are only seen when passed between private individuals. Once you deposit a $500 bill in your bank account, it gets put aside for shredding by the Federal Reserve.

I too am concerned about changing the look of currency too often. Initially when the first run of "new money" was introduced there were many smaller business that refused the money because they weren't educated about the new bills, but did know how to check "old" money for counterfeits. Now with the changes happening so often now, I believe some people who just don't care will take any greenish piece of paper with a "20" printed on it and a photo of Andrew Jackson. Some people really are that naive when it comes to cash, they have never really looked at the bills before.

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X-CalBR8 said:
Is there a certain date that the old bills are not going to be accepted at all? If not, what is to stop counterfeiters from making the old kind of bills, say 10-20 years from now and them still being accepted as legal tender? Also, what if a person has a stash of bills in the house that they are saving and they try to spend them 10-20 years from now? Or what if you lost a $100 bill somewhere in the house and you find it 10 years later? Will they still be accepted? This new money really brings up a lot of unanswered questions.

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From what I've heard, old bills will always be accepted as legal tender. As a practical matter, however, old bills get taken out of circulation as they wear out, so old style bills will become more and more uncommon. If somebody tries to counterfeit old bills, at a certain point the counterfeit bill will attract attention to itself simply by being old. A cash handler could therefore give such bills greater scrutiny and make catching the counterfeit more likely. It is still very difficult, as far as I know, to make a counterfeit $20 old style bill that could get past a person who knows what to look for who is examining a bill specifically to determine its authenticity.

Anyone heard of J Boggs?

He's an artist that draws money and uses his drawings to barter for services.
PBS did a documentary on him that I really liked.
He travels around on a Harley that he "bought" with his art and even went an entire year without ever using legal currency.

Meeting J.S.G. Boggs, the counterfeit artist

Hi GJW,

Yes, I've heard of him. He was on T.V. once showing how he barters for his art. He almost got in troublt with the law until he explained he was trading "art" for the items.

Max said: "It is still very difficult, as far as I know, to make a counterfeit $20 old style bill that could get past a person who knows what to look for who is examining a bill specifically to determine its authenticity."

Yeah, but 90% of the time, aren't we talking about some teenager working in a fast food place or at Wal-Mart, or some other major chain, instead of some great money expert?

I sometimes think you could probably pass off a bill drawn with a magic marker and a coloring crayon to most of these teens and get away with it, assuming you use paper that felt anything like a real bill (such as bleached one dollar bills). After all, why should the teen that is sometimes getting paid even *less* than minimum wage to take your money care one bit what you hand them, so long as it even looks close to real? After all, it's no loss to them at their crummy job. Even if they get fired over it, they just go down the street to the next fast food place and get a job. Just something to think about.

To bring this back to flashlights.....

The Arc website says that you can use their UV model to check the security thread in the new money.
Differnet denominations are supposed to fluoresce in different colors but every bill I tried looks pretty much the same color.
Are all of my bills counterfeit or does the Arc-AAA-UV just not have enough poop?

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X-CalBR8 said:
Max said: "It is still very difficult, as far as I know, to make a counterfeit $20 old style bill that could get past a person who knows what to look for who is examining a bill specifically to determine its authenticity."

Yeah, but 90% of the time, aren't we talking about some teenager working in a fast food place or at Wal-Mart, or some other major chain, instead of some great money expert?

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Exactly, hence the new style bills. It should be harder to get a fake new bill past a distracted supermarket cashier than it would be for a fake old bill. I'd say that nearly half the times I have tried to pay with a supermarket with a $50 or $100 bill (not that often), they have pulled out the test marker, held it up to the light, etc.

Passing old counterfeit bills won't ever become a big problem because as soon as somebody starts noticing a new epidemic of counterfeit 15yr old bills, everybody will be on notice to treat old style bills with extra suspicion. Since the number of legitimate old style bills will go down over time, there will be less "needle in a haystack" problem of finding the fake bills.

If it really becomes a problem, some places might refuse to accept old style bills. This is similar, I guess, to the way New York City Subway "token" booths don't take bills larger than $20. But, you will always be able to take your authentic old bills to the bank.

My understanding on the subject is that eventually cash registers will be able to tell if it is the "new" money and what denomination, if it's not then it should be inspected to make sure it is at least the "old" money and entered as to what it is. Sort of like what vending machines do now. So some kid at Wal-Mart waves it over the register and it tells the register it is a $20 and to give $ in change. No thinking or question on anyone's part. But of course who knows how long until that happens.

No matter what is done, as long as people are in the loop, there will be counterfeit money:

$200 Bill with Pres. George Bush on front

-Bill

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GJW said:
To bring this back to flashlights.....

The Arc website says that you can use their UV model to check the security thread in the new money.
Differnet denominations are supposed to fluoresce in different colors but every bill I tried looks pretty much the same color.
Are all of my bills counterfeit or does the Arc-AAA-UV just not have enough poop?

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First, make sure your bill is the newest, not including this new 2004 release. Then put your UV UNDER the thread. It WILL flouresce different colors. Unless it's fake. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

//Dan

PhotonBoy-

May I suggest you also keep some cash around, small bills. My uncle in Ontario will gladly tell you why, ever since they had that little blackout a while back.

GregR

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BB said:
No matter what is done, as long as people are in the loop, there will be counterfeit money:

$200 Bill with Pres. George Bush on front

-Bill

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From the story:
Food Lion said normal policy is not to accept bills over $100.

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Good Policy /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif
I had heard this story as they caught the guy trying to pass a $200 and tied him to the Food Lion 'case'.
I've also heard of cases where counterfiting couldn't be charged against someone who passed bad bills because they were not even close to looking like real money.
I have to agree with X-CalBR8, having worked with money and CCards and seeing how people accept them it is amazing there are not more problems.
By the way I saw a new $20 at Wal-Mart and bought it from the cashier, want to show it to all so they know to accept it, assuming they notice /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif