Do folks do currency hunting like they do coin roll hunting? Like all the years/letters of $1 bills?

Estil

Okay, so for the past couple of months I've been coin roll hunting (or CRH for short) trying to get all the years/mintmarks of pennies/nickels/dimes/quarters (and if I'm super lucky I might occasionally get to CRH halves or dollar coins) and fill in as many of the holes in the albums as you can?

Well I've been thinking about doing something similar with $1 bills. That is, just like CRH trying to get all the years/letters I can. Or at the very least I can just stick with only the A's (Boston) to match where my late wife comes from. Or am I not nearly as likely to get any older bills as unlike coins, $1 bills wear out much more easily and are "retired" after only a few years?

Does anyone here actually do currency hunting (say, buy a pack or half a pack of $1 bills face value from your local bank/credit union and trying to get all the years/Fed Reserve Bank letters you can) like folks do coin roll hunting?

PS: Just so everyone knows, I'm not talking about serial number hunting...everyone here knows about that.

SaorAlba

I do ask for older bills in banks, sometimes I get some but most of the time not. Back in 2011 I got 85 $5 bills that had been brought in by a depositor who told the teller they were her husband who died in 1948 - red seals, brown seals, and blue seals.

Estil

@SaorAlba said:
I do ask for older bills in banks, sometimes I get some but most of the time not. Back in 2011 I got 85 $5 bills that had been brought in by a depositor who told the teller they were her husband who died in 1948 - red seals, brown seals, and blue seals.

Oh wow! Good going! Sadly as an SSDI recipient I would never have that much money just laying around to just buy off that many $5 bills without a second thought. Still when I was a kid my grandma often wrote me letters and included $5 as "my allowance" so it might be kinda neat to collect the "small head" (is that the right term?) $5 bills someday as it might bring back those kind of memories! I can't believe it's already been over 25 years since the last "small head" notes (Series 1995?)...

PS: Just so everyone knows, I'm not talking about serial number hunting...everyone here knows about that.

element159

I've never got packs from the bank to search, but I do collect $1 notes from circulation, each series date, each fed district (first letter in serial), each suffix letter (last letter in serial), and blocks that match the chemical element symbols (i.e. prefix B and suffix R matches bromine Br). I rarely find new notes for this now, except when a new series date comes out.

Estil

@element159 said:
I've never got packs from the bank to search, but I do collect $1 notes from circulation, each series date, each fed district (first letter in serial), each suffix letter (last letter in serial), and blocks that match the chemical element symbols (i.e. prefix B and suffix R matches bromine Br). I rarely find new notes for this now, except when a new series date comes out.

Just how many suffix letters do they use? All 26? I take it you were a chemistry major? Wow that's a hard subject!

element159

They do not use suffixes O and Z, so there are 24 that are used.

Ted 1

@Estil said:
Okay, so for the past couple of months I've been coin roll hunting (or CRH for short) trying to get all the years/mintmarks of pennies/nickels/dimes/quarters (and if I'm super lucky I might occasionally get to CRH halves or dollar coins) and fill in as many of the holes in the albums as you can?

Well I've been thinking about doing something similar with $1 bills. That is, just like CRH trying to get all the years/letters I can. Or at the very least I can just stick with only the A's (Boston) to match where my late wife comes from. Or am I not nearly as likely to get any older bills as unlike coins, $1 bills wear out much more easily and are "retired" after only a few years?

Does anyone here actually do currency hunting (say, buy a pack or half a pack of $1 bills face value from your local bank/credit union and trying to get all the years/Fed Reserve Bank letters you can) like folks do coin roll hunting?

PS: Just so everyone knows, I'm not talking about serial number hunting...everyone here knows about that.

I'd love to find serial mismatches with the bank searches.

1988, 2006, 1969, 1981 to name a few

Estil

@element159 said:
They do not use suffixes O and Z, so there are 24 that are used.

Probably because they look too much like a zero or a two. Just like how with video game passwords you have to be careful to specify whether it's an O ("oh") or a 0 (zero). An I ("eye") or a 1 (one).