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The opposite day, I went to a drag show in Brooklyn where one among the queens mentioned that an audience member had tipped her with a $2 bill. She was shocked, and so was I: I’d all the time thought $2 bills were incredibly rare. In actual fact, I used to maintain one in my wallet as a child within the ‘90s since it felt so special.
Mentally, I’ve been putting $2 bills in the identical category as $100s — obviously, I do know they exist, but I don’t come into contact with them often enough to view them as on a regular basis currency.
Now, though, I’m re-evaluating that belief.
Are $2 bills actually rare?
Let’s start off with some history: Two-dollar banknotes are technically older than the USA itself. The original bills in that denomination were authorized by the Continental Congress before the Declaration of Independence was even signed.
Once the U.S. was formally established, the federal government first issued a $2 note in 1862. At that time, it had a portrait of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton on it. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, began appearing on $2 bills starting in 1869.
They never really took off. Despite temporary bouts of recognition within the Nineties and Forties, the $2 bill has had a fairly rough time breaking into the mainstream. For a long time, its price point was related to bribes, prostitution and gambling. The Latest York Times called the $2 bill “Treasury’s jinx” in 1925; more recently, CNN denounced it as “the unloved child of paper currency.”
Even the Bureau of Engraving and Printing — the agency with the Treasury Department answerable for printing bills — acknowledges this status.
“For many of their history, $2 notes have been unpopular, being viewed as unlucky or just awkward to make use of in money exchanges,” the BEP writes in a fact sheet. “$2 notes were often returned to the Treasury with corners torn off, making them mutilated currency and unfit for reissue.”
The Treasury actually stopped printing them in 1966 as a consequence of lack of demand, Peter Treglia, vp and managing director of currency at Stack’s Bowers Galleries, tells me. In 1976, $2 bills were brought back for the Bicentennial, though, and that gave them a slight resurgence…
…as a collector’s item.
Today, “It’s not unusual for them to be given as an excellent luck charm” or a present, he says, but $2 bills are simply not circulated in regular commerce.
There are different theories as to why, however the result’s undeniable: When people come across a $2 bill, they have an inclination to carry onto it. They do not spend it.
Why people think $2 bills are special
Yes, it is perhaps unusual to identify $2 bills in on a regular basis life — but are they rare? Nope, in line with Steven Roach, numismatic educator with the American Numismatic Association, a nonprofit that encourages the study and collection of coins, paper money and related objects. He tells me that $2 bills are “not rare when it comes to quantity.”
Every 12 months, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors places an order for currency from the BEP based on demand (and the way much old currency will likely be destroyed as a consequence of wear and tear, design changes, etc.). The BEP then fulfills that order and delivers the banknotes to Federal Reserve money offices, which then distribute them through banks, credit unions and the like.
Throughout the 2023 fiscal 12 months, the BEP produced roughly 2.4 billion $1 bills, 1.3 billion $100 bills and 882 million $5 bills.
It also made 128 million $2 bills — obviously, not rather a lot in comparison with other denominations.
Some years, the BEP doesn’t produce any $2 bills in any respect. Just for the reason that turn of the century, this happened in 2021, 2020, 2017, 2018, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001 and 2000. (Whew.)
(In line with the latest Federal Reserve data, there are 1.5 billion $2 bills in circulation. For context, there are 14.3 billion $1 bills and a whopping 18.5 billion $100 bills in circulation.)
But Roach says simply because the federal government is printing them doesn’t mean they’re getting used to purchase stuff or make change.
“It is not as common because the dollar bill — or $5, $10, $20, $100 — to flow into,” Roach says. “[People] don’t see it too often, and since of that, they get the perception that it have to be rare.”
Many of the bills that aren’t out within the wild are in bank vaults, which suggests they’re not especially difficult to get, Treglia says. All I actually have to do is go to the bank and request them: an accessibility that form of takes away from the mystery of all of it.
The underside line
$2 bills could seem special because they’re not utilized in most abnormal transactions. But statistically speaking, they’re not.
“People see them, they usually’re like, ‘What is that this?’” Treglia says. “They’re collectible just because they’re a part of U.S. history.”
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