Why A Dollar Bill in Your Pocket Could Be Worth Thousands

There are all sorts of collectors, as you well know. But even in the world of coin and currency collecting, there is a new kind of collecting that I’d never heard of before. They don’t care about the condition of the note, how old it is or even the denomination. These collectors are after low or otherwise interesting serial numbers.

Low serial numbers, from 00000001 to 00000100, are sought after, as well as palindromes (23599532), solids (with a digit that repeats eight times), seven-of-a-kinds (66666665), ladders (45678901) and important dates (12071941). The criteria get even more obscure from there: Undis is seeking a pi note, with the number 31415927. But the more apparently jumbled the digits, the less likely it is that anyone with the bill in their wallet will ever notice. Which is too bad when you consider how much these fancy numbers can sell for--quite a bit more than the bill's face value, in some cases. Right now, on Undis' website, you can buy a $1 bill with the serial number 00000002 for a whopping $2,500. If that sounds like chump change, consider that a $5 bill with the number 33333333 goes for $13,000.

I can only imagine how many bills may have passed through my hand that I never thought to examine…

(via kottke)