While researching my last post to defend Ulysses S. Grant from the currency-whitewashers who wish to remove him from the U.S. $50 bill, I came across this neat site that shows you everyone on every piece of American money.
From the penny (Lincoln) to the $100 (Franklin) most of them were at least semi-familiar. But then I started getting into the really high-denomination stuff.
I knew that there used to be $1,000 bills, for example, but $5,000 bills?
$10,000?
$100,000??!?
Yup, the $100,000 bill, featuring Woodrow Wilson, was real paper money. Mostly, the high-value bills were used in transactions between banks — and the $100,000 bill was strictly intra-governmental. Now that there are electronic cash transactions, the need for such currency has faded — and so have the big bucks.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t have some fun while it lasted. How’d you like to be entrusted with a $10,000 bill, for example?
How’d you like to lose it?
That’s what happened to a messenger boy in 1910 in New York.
Click here to read the rest of the story. For the record, $10,000 in 1910 would be worth approximately $233,495.25 today. At least, according to Tom’s Inflation Calculator.)
Grant Hamilton
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