The Value of Money

[werner at mc.ab.com]

>Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 17:24:13 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Llywelyn <samman at CS.YALE.EDU>
>
>Unless of course you have a $ bill that is a specie note.  I have a few ten
>dollar bills that state that they are redeemable for specie.

I have some funny money, myself.  I have several of the original federal
reserve notes, that came out after the U.S. went off the silver standard.

They look just like a silver certificate, except they say they are
redeemable in "lawful money" instead of "silver".  A couple of years later,
once the fuss had died down, they changed them to say that they ARE "lawful
money".

Of course, if you took one of the original federal reserve notes to a
federal reserve bank to redeem it, they just gave you another one, but the
impression they gave the public was that you COULD get silver (i.e., what
the public considered to be "lawful money") if you really wanted it.

I had an interesting experience in the late '70s with a torn $50 bill.  A
friend's pit bull had chewed it, but it was mostly still there.  Neither of
us had a bank account, as we were trying to pretend we were bigshots (no
paper trails, etc.).

Since I was travelling occasionally to Wash, DC, I told him I could take it
to the treasury department and get a good one.  They took the bill away
from me, and gave me a check for $50!

I had to get my girlfriend to cash it.

tw