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Comment by kirykl | Hacker News Reader

There's a whole industry selling real $2 bills for more than face value

https://smile.amazon.com/Two-Dollar-Bill-Pack-Bills/dp/B01N2...

I once bought a sheet of uncut $2 bills from BEP [1]. They go for much more than a face value, but it was a nice souvenir from America.

[1] https://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/2currencysheetsbeptestshee...

I find that really strange because yesterday I literally walked out of my bank with 50 brand new $2 bills.

For some people, time is money. So the convenience of avoiding a bank branch visit is worth paying a little more for the bills.

What do people do with them? Store them in mint condition in hope of creating collectors items in the future?

My dad takes clients out to lunch a few times a week. He always tips the server with $2 bills. Every server on his side of town remembers him, and his favorite drinks, meals, etc. (and really impresses the clients!)

When I used to work as a valet it was a big deal every time we got a $2 bill in tip. When we were splitting the tip we would always ask if any of the new guys had never gotten one before and make sure they got one.

There was a factory in a town somewhere that paid all its workers' bonuses in $2 bills so that the town could see the effect that the factory had on the local economy.

Give them to friends and kids, see them smile.

Also good for tipping.

Back when $2 used to be a good tip, but now? Do you fork over 5 of them?

Yes, you would use more than one $2-bill to tip them $10.

My son is in kindergarten and one of his Vietnamese classmates gave everyone a red envelope with a $2 in it for Lunar New Year. I have also received a similar gift from a Chinese co-worker, so maybe that's where some are going?

I love Woz's trick of having uncut sheets perforated and tearing them off for tips.

My recollection of the story is that he would laminate them into "tablets" with rubber cement and then tear off the top sheet(s) to make a payment. I think I have that story bookmarked somewhere.

EDIT: I'm not sure where the "printing" part of this story comes into play but it looks like his tablets do indeed have multiple bills per sheet in addition to being laminated at the top. (https://hackaday.com/2012/08/03/woz-prints-and-spend-his-own...)

You can buy uncut sheets of bills directly from the US mint. I got a sheet of 12x $1 bills when I visited DC as a child.

See here: https://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/1currencysheets.aspx

Right ... but I suspect his local printer was involved in turning them into a tablet of a given size rather than actually printing the bills.

Yep, he got a print shop to apply rubber cement and perforate the sheets.

Does anyone know how is that not illegal?

Even if they meet the required standards I thought only the government was allowed to print bills.

Does anyone have any links or references to what Woz is saying?

He's pulling the host's leg; the "high quality print shop" he buys them from is the Bureau of Printing and Engraving [1].

Of course, when you're interviewing a prankster about pranks, you've got to expect that sort of thing :)

[1] http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/78.html

Aha!

That makes perfect sense. And of course I fell for it...

Thanks!

I live in a rural mountain town in North Central Washington and the local IGA always gives crisp 2 dollar bills as change when you pay cash. Not sure why they do but it's pretty neat.

What is a "local IGA"?

IGA is a grocery store chain. Well, actually it's a franchise where each store has the IGA brand but it is individually owned and operated. They tend to be popular in smaller towns where a local resident owns and runs the store.

There aren't any near where I live, but I've seen them a lot when traveling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGA_(supermarkets)

Thanks!

I thought it was an accronym.

I believe Steve Wozniak was/is a $2 bill fan. As far as I can remember he just ordered them at the bank.

Actually it's better than that; he buys uncut sheets of bills and pulls various pranks with them. He ends up paying more than $2 per bill, so it's mainly just to weird people out.

He got sheets of 4 perforated and then bound with a gum binding (like a pad of paper). He then whips out the book and pulls a $2 off of the perforation.

He'll carry larger sheets folded up and then cut a bill out with scissors in front of the person he is paying it to. Apparently he got the secret service called on him once.

http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/78.html

[edit]

If you want to buy uncut bills you can yourself, but there's about a 50% markup on even the largest sheets:

https://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/2currencysheetsbeptestshee...

note to self: become rich enough to buy money

...to buy expensive money

sheets use to be at cost with free shipping, but the dang card churners killed everything related to this site.

They would buy monsterboxes of coins of various monies on credit cards and turn them back into the bank and pay the bill for perks.

They eventually changed the Merchant category codes to cash advance, and then raised the prices. :-(

At least the url is self descriptive.

Is the government allowed to make money (more than its value) by selling money?

I recall a story told to me many years back of him at a (U2?) concert where he was up in the upper deck. He would make a paper airplane out of the $2 bill and throw it. He would watch it with binoculars to see where it landed and the confusion on the person’s face when there is a bill stuck in their hair.

That looks like nothing but thinly-disguised money laundering. Hack an Amazon account, buy some cash, repeat. Why else would someone buy $20 for $32?

Yep hacking an account and giving your real mailing address and card information complete with a paper trail is definitely how you launder.

Not to mention it's somewhat de-laundering: you start with money in a bank or credit on a card and end up with hard to spend cash. Hard to spend as in, you can't really pay your mortgage or buy a car with $2 bills.

Why not? My auto and hoke loan is through my credit union. I can walk in any branch and make a cash payment on any of my loans. I don't even have to verify I own the accounts.

You will attract AML attention if this goes over the $10k threshold for any one transaction (or near it in some cases).

Who has a mortgage or car payment that is in excess of $10k per month?

(tangent) An old friend of mine claimed that he could get very low-ball offers accepted for used cars by showing up with his entire bid in hundred dollar bills in cash, he said that people were so mesmerized by the sight of literal stacks of currency that they would accept lower offers than they would for other "cash" offers that were otherwise some form of bank transfer.

Alternate explanation: payment in bills facilitates the salesman cheating his boss. The salesman writes up two bills of sale: one to you for the cash amount received, one to the dealership for the minimum price he can get away with. The difference goes in his pocket.

Hmmmm.

This is useful.

San Franciscans :-)

Anybody who bought a house for more than (napkin) $1.5MM? Lots of those out there.

Anybody who borrowed that much to buy a house, anyway.

People with a need to launder money?

There is a very real novelty factor of an uncut sheet. I have one and didn't mind paying the premium. Also, I'm pretty sure the U.S. Government doesn't need help laundering money. They sell them at a premium direct

I would say it's the other way around: you sell some ill-gotten cash, which is then sitting on a legal account.

Hacking an amazon count and buying cash isn't money laundering. You could just buy stuff on amazon and skip the cash middleman.

Because $2 dollar bills are rare to find and get in bulk; iirc if you buy rolls of change at a bank (for change, e.g. if you need it for your shop) you also pay a bit more than the face value of the currency.

I "buy" rolls of change at the bank constantly. I also turn in unrolled change, which they count for me. (I own machines that take quarters)

I've never paid a penny extra for the rolls, and my bank does the coin-counting for free as well.

I have never in my life heard of paying extra for rolled coins. In fact, there's a whole subreddit devoted to people who buy rolls of coins and then hunt through them looking for old (silver) coins. They turn the coins back in later, at a different bank/location. This would likely not be a viable hobby if there was any upcharge.

In my local bank (Germany) I get up to 2 rolls of any denomination for free, per day. I can also cash in loose coins (to my account) at an automatic counting machine (but not many branches have them). For people who don't have an account at this bank, iirc there's some kind of fee for getting rolled coins, might be in the ballpark of 50ct per roll or something.

Neither are true. I get fresh straps of $2 bills all the time. They are still printed.

This is absolutely untrue, I get cash of all denominations for my business at the bank all the time, including $2 bills. They usually have to pop into the vault to get some since there's not a lot of call for them, but they're by no means impossible or cost extra to get.

This boggles my mind. It's even worse than that psychology experiment where they auction off $20 bills. (Often for more than $20.)

That's called a "dollar auction" and it works because the rules are such that the 2nd highest bid still has to pay the money they bid, even though they won't get the prize. Given that incentive structure, it is cheaper for you to pay $21 for a $20 (and lose $1), rather than being the 2nd higher bid at $19, and lose the entire $19.

It is meant as an introduction to other occurrences in peoples lives, where they invest something that they will lose if they abandon the activity. Being on hold is one such example, where you lose the time you've invested in being on hold, if you give up and hang up the call before it's connected. Thus you end up in a situation where you are somewhat trapped.

Yes, and you can get them in tear-out books for a huge markup.[1] That idea is old; it was supposedly created by the marketing director of Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, mid 20th century.

[1] https://www.moneypads.com/products.html

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