WBTV Interview: If you’ve got a $2 bill in your hands, you might just have hit the jackpot!

Coinfully Discussing Numismatic News On Prime Time Television

Revelations that some $2 bills can be worth thousands of times their face value – one such note from 2003 recently sold for $4,000 – has sparked a mass search through dusty drawers and vintage collections across the country.

In use since 1862, certain $2 notes, if they have the right serial number, seal colour, and printing year, and are in good enough condition, can fetch an unsuspecting owner up to $5,000. That’s right – $5,000! But how do you know which notes are the valuable ones?

WBTV’s Kristen Miranda got our very own Coinfully president Wyatt McDonald along to explain the $2 bill phenomenon and reveal what other rarities to look out for, to viewers.

Wyatt’s conversation with Kristen Miranda is transcribed below.

KM: We like talking about money when we’re possibly going to make more money with the bills that we have on hand in our wallets and purses. You might have seen the news recently about $2 bills being worth thousands. If only! But it’s kind of true. It got us thinking that there might be more bills that we could find or are in existence which are worth more than face value. As usual, when we have money questions, we asked Wyatt McDonald of Coinfully to come and see us. Wyatt, remind people what Coinfully is.

WM: Coinfully is a service where, if you have a coin collection or a paper money collection, we will come out and appraise it for you and also make an offer.

KM: OK, let’s talk about these $2 bills that have been making the news. I remember, like we all do, a crazy aunt giving us a $2 bill for Christmas, which we all loved, but is it every $2 bill that’s worth more or specific $2 bills?

WM: It’s specific ones. There’s a lot of different things that go into making money, serial numbers, for example, and if a note ever needs to be replaced, it gets a star put next to it, which means that serial number has been replaced. In this case, a note made in 2003 was serial number seven. So there were seven zeros in front of it and then just the number seven, and it had a star next to it, making it very rare. It was also in quite high condition. So that was something that a collector would love to have because of its exclusive nature.

KM: If people have $2 bills in their homes right now, what do they need to be looking for?

WM: Well, first off you should be looking at the seal. When you think of a regular note, if that little crest down at the bottom is a different colour – blue, red, gold – that’s a good thing. You may not be able to picture it, but it’s actually pretty common in certain scenarios. Those notes, right off the bat, are at least worth four to five times what they say on the back, and that value can go up into the hundreds of dollars.

KM: Okay! Well, that’s a good place to start. And you said there are other notes out there in the world, still in existence, that are worth much more than face value. . .

WM: Yes. We’ve been making money since the 1700s, and it’s changed – it’s gotten bigger, it’s gotten smaller. In some situations, the denomination was much higher – $500, $5,000, $10,000. Those were notes that were usually made for bank-to-bank transfers before wire transfers existed. I recently bought a $500 bill in good condition, from a family which inherited a collection, that was worth $2,000.

KM: What made it worth two thousand?

WM: Just the exclusive nature of it. There isn’t that many left and the one that we bought looks like it is still actually in pretty good condition. It may have a stain on the front, but still that note is worth, at a minimum, two thousand.

KM: You have this big honkin’ $10 bill here. I’ve never seen one this big before. Tell me about this.

WM: Large size stuff is usually from the early 1900s or before when paper money was much larger, because you needed a lot less of it to get whatever you needed. So this one specifically is a gold certificate. When the US Dollar was backed by gold and silver, this one was redeemable for gold. Not anymore, but it’s still able to be spent as $10. I know that’s a strange thought – like going to a Walmart and handing someone this giant $10 bill! But this note is worth around a thousand bucks. In slightly better condition, that jumps very quickly to two, three, four thousand very quickly.

KM: I want to go ahead and put up your website information – Home | Coinfully – because you said there’s a spot on your website where people, if they have a lot of coins, can go and very quickly determine which coins they should be looking for.

WM: The US Mint has made a lot of coins, and we have a ‘cheat sheet’ that will tell you all the better dates so you don’t go cross-eyed looking through all your coins trying to find out the right one. So that’s on our website. It’s called the Instant Value Guide – coinfully.com/instant-value-guide/ – and it is definitely going to help cut through the noise and tell you what the rare stuff is.

KM: I’m bookmarking that right now! Thank you so much for coming to see us. We appreciate it. My goodness, everybody has a little something, right? Something their grandma left them, or whatever’s in a jar, so it’s always good to know.

A special thanks to WBTV for having us on and letting us talk about our passion. Whether you’ve amassed your own coin collection or inherited a coin collection, please do get in touch if you’re thinking of selling your rare coins and would like to know how much your coins are worth.

At Coinfully, we offer a reliable, realistic, and transparent online or in-person coin appraisal service so that our customers know exactly what they’re dealing with and never feel like they are being taken for a ride. After all, we are coin collectors too, so there is never any pressure when you speak with our team.

We have decades of experience of buying and selling coins behind us, request an appraisal or call our team today on 704-621-4893 for a no-obligation chat.