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Aha!

I saw this posted yesterday but could not respond with my speculation, which turned out to be true, assuming the bill depicted is the bill at issue.

As an amateur numismatist, when I first heard about this the first thing that crossed my mind was that it might be an “old” $2.00 bill (from about 1963 to April 13, 1976 they didn’t make any).

The “old” ones are “United States Notes”, not “Federal Reserve Notes”. It says so right above Jefferson. They have red letters and a red seal. United States Notes were authorized to be printed under a Civil War statute.

Now we see a photo of the bill. I was actually able to tell from the BACK of the bill that this was an old, pre-1963 United States note because it has Monticello on the back. The 1976 and later notes are Federal Reserve Notes and have a completely different back - a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Moreover, I could tell from the back that this was not a series 1963 note (the newest of the “old” kind) because it lacked the motto “In God We Trust” over Monticello.

This is a “1953A” note, as stated on the front. That does not mean it is from 1953. You can tell the approximate date of issue from the signatures. Robert B. Anderson was Sec. Treasury from 57 to 61 under Eisenhower.

BTW, Ivy Baker Priest, the Treasurer as shown on the note, was the aunt of Pat Priest who played Marilyn on the Munsters.

Even without the benefit of my store of essentially useless trivial knowledge, no adult in their right mind would leap at the conclusion that the bill was fake. It is professionally done. It is dated 63 years ago (even though it’s a bit newer than that). The geniuses who charged the kid should have figured that much out, and realized “Duh, I don’t know what $2 bills looked like in 1953. It looks like a professional job, maybe it’s just old, not fake.”

It would take about 1 minute to find an exemplar of a 1953 series A $2 bill by googling and confirm that the note is no more suspect than any other note in circulation.

The only question I would have would be “where did you get this from?”

That’s a question I had at my local bank when I saw a teller scrutinzing an old $10.00 bill with the big serial numbers given to her a few weeks ago. Most people won’t spend those so when I see them I think someone was tapping someone else’s collection.

I tried to finagle the teller into trading it to me for a new $10.00 but she did not bite.