September 24th 2023.
At the Long Beach Expo U.S. Coins Signature Auction in Dallas, Texas, a $10,000 Great Depression era bill recently sold for almost $500,000, which broke the previous record of $384,000 from September 2020. It was in perfect condition and featured Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase.
This bill had been decommissioned in 1969, making the $100 bill the highest monetary note issued in the United States. The Museum of American Finance reported that the $10,000 bill was the largest denomination ever publicly circulated, with the exception of a $100,000 denomination used just for banks.
Dustin Johnston, Vice President of Currency at Heritage Auctions, said in a press release, “Large-denomination notes always have drawn the interest of collectors of all levels. The $10,000 trails only the $100,000 gold certificate issued in 1934, and of the 18 examples graded by PMG, this example is tied for the highest-graded.”
The auction also featured other items that went for large sums of money, such as a $20 dollar coin minted in 1899 that sold for $468,000 and a $5,000 note sold for $300,000. At the end of the auction, which concluded on September 24th, a total of $15,545,589 had been pulled in.
The 1899 coin featured a portrait of the head of the Statue of Liberty, and it was remarked by Todd Imhof, Executive Vice President of Heritage, that “It takes an extraordinary coin to rise to the top of an auction with such consistent high quality, and this 1899 double eagle is that kind of coin.”
High denomination bills were printed throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s, but were discontinued by the U.S. Treasury because they were not often used by the public. In 2009, the number of $10,000 bills was around 336, the number of $5,000 bills was around 342, and the number of $1,000 bills was around 165,362, which explains why these uncirculated large denomination bills can fetch such a premium price.
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