Large denominations of United States currency

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Today, the currency of the United States, the U.S. dollar, is printed in bills in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100.

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At one time, however, it also included five larger denominations. Shown here is a $100,000 Gold certificate from 1934. High-denomination currency was prevalent from the very beginning of U.S. Government issue (1861). $500, $1,000, and $5,000 interest bearing notes were issued in 1861, and $10,000 gold certificates arrived in 1865. There are many different designs and types of high-denomination notes.

The high-denomination bills were issued in a small size in 1929, along with the $1 through $100 denominations. Their designs were as follows:

The $500 bill featured a portrait of William McKinley
The $1,000 bill featured a portrait of Grover Cleveland
The $5,000 bill featured a portrait of James Madison
The $10,000 bill featured a portrait of Salmon P. Chase
The $100,000 bill featured a portrait of Woodrow Wilson

The reverse designs featured abstract scrollwork with ornate denomination identifiers. All were printed in green, except for the $100,000. The $100,000 is an odd bill, in that it was not generally issued, and printed only as a gold certificate of Series of 1934. These gold certificates (of denominations $100, $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000) were issued after the gold standard was repealed and gold was compulsorily purchased by presidential order of Franklin Roosevelt on March 9, 1933 (see United States Executive Order 6102), and thus were only used for intra-government transactions. They are printed in orange on the back, and are illegal to own. All known pieces are in government museums. This series was discontinued in 1940. The other bills are printed in black and green as shown by the $10,000 example above.

Printing of other high-denomination bills was discontinued in 1946, but the bills continued to circulate until 1969, when they were officially withdrawn. The $5,000 and $10,000 effectively disappeared well before then: there are only about 200 $5,000 and 300 $10,000 bills known, of all series since 1861. Most of the $10,000 bills are due to the preservation of 100 ($1,000,000) of them by Benny Binion, the owner of Binion's Horseshoe casino in Nevada. For many years, they were displayed in a glass case in the casino. The case is no longer there, and the bills were sold to collectors.

Circulation of high-denomination bills was halted in 1969 by executive order of President Richard Nixon, in an effort to combat organized crime.

For the most part, these bills were used by banks and the Federal Government for large financial transactions. This was especially true for gold certificates from 1865 to 1934. However, the introduction of the electronic money system has made large-scale cash transactions obsolete; when combined with concerns about counterfeiting and the use of cash in unlawful activities such as the illegal drug trade, it is unlikely that the U.S. government will re-issue large denomination currency in the near future.

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Fake denominations

Image:Bushbill1.jpg Other denominations of bills have been created by individuals as practical jokes or as genuine attempts at counterfeiting. In 2001, a man bought a sundae at a Danville, KY Dairy Queen with a $200 bill (with George W. Bush on it) and received $198 in change. In September 2003, in North Carolina, a man named Travis Martin used a $200 bill (with George W. Bush's likeness on it) at a Food Lion to purchase $150 in groceries. The cashier obligingly cashed the fake bill and presented the perpetrator with $50 in change.

In March 2004, Alice Regina Pike attempted to use a $1,000,000 bill with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front to purchase $1671.55 in goods from a Wal-Mart in Covington, Georgia, for which she was then arrested.

Though not meant to be used as actual legal tender, Christian evangelist Ray Comfort's ministry, Living Waters Publications, produces another fake $1,000,000 bill, which is in reality a Christian gospel tract.

Various $3 bills have been released, generally poking fun at politicians or celebrities such as Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, or Hillary Clinton; this likely stems from the American idiom "queer as a three-dollar bill."

On March 16th 2006, US Customs Agents arrested Tekle Zigetta on federal charges of currency smuggling and possible counterfeit charges of possessing a fake $100,000 gold certificate. When agents went to a west Hollywood Apartment for further investigation, the search revealed a stash of $1,000,000,000 (1 Billion Dollar) bills, doctored from the $1000 bill of Grover Cleveland. There were 250 bills, all of which were found to be fake.

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