Greenback Scholar Asks: Are $2 Payments Really Uncommon?

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The opposite day, I went to a drag present in Brooklyn the place one of many queens talked about that an viewers member had tipped her with a $2 invoice. She was shocked, and so was I: I’d at all times thought $2 payments have been extremely uncommon. In reality, I used to maintain one in my pockets as a child within the ‘90s as a result of it felt so particular.

Mentally, I’ve been placing $2 payments in the identical class as $100s — clearly, I do know they exist, however I don’t come into contact with them typically sufficient to view them as on a regular basis foreign money.

Now, although, I’m re-evaluating that perception.

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Are $2 payments truly uncommon?

Let’s begin off with some historical past: Two-dollar banknotes are technically older than america itself. The unique payments in that denomination have been approved by the Continental Congress earlier than the Declaration of Independence was even signed.

As soon as the U.S. was formally established, the federal authorities first issued a $2 be aware in 1862. At that time, it had a portrait of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton on it. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, began showing on $2 payments starting in 1869.

They by no means actually took off. Regardless of temporary bouts of recognition within the Eighteen Nineties and Nineteen Forties, the $2 invoice has had a fairly tough time breaking into the mainstream. For many years, its worth level was related to bribes, prostitution and playing. The New York Occasions known as the $2 invoice “Treasury’s jinx” in 1925; extra lately, CNN denounced it as “the unloved little one of paper foreign money.”

Even the Bureau of Engraving and Printing — the company with the Treasury Division in control of printing payments — acknowledges this status.

“For many of their historical past, $2 notes have been unpopular, being seen as unfortunate or just awkward to make use of in money exchanges,” the BEP writes in a truth sheet. “$2 notes have been typically returned to the Treasury with corners torn off, making them mutilated foreign money and unfit for reissue.”

The Treasury truly stopped printing them in 1966 attributable to lack of demand, Peter Treglia, vice chairman and managing director of foreign money at Stack’s Bowers Galleries, tells me. In 1976, $2 payments have been introduced again for the Bicentennial, although, and that gave them a slight resurgence…

…as a collector’s merchandise.

At this time, “It’s not unusual for them to be given as an excellent luck appeal” or a present, he says, however $2 payments are merely not circulated in common commerce.

There are completely different theories as to why, however the result’s simple: When individuals come throughout a $2 invoice, they have a tendency to carry onto it. They do not spend it.

Why individuals assume $2 payments are particular

Sure, it is likely to be uncommon to identify $2 payments in on a regular basis life — however are they uncommon? Nope, based on Steven Roach, numismatic educator with the American Numismatic Affiliation, a nonprofit that encourages the research and assortment of cash, paper cash and associated objects. He tells me that $2 payments are “not uncommon by way of amount.”

Yearly, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors locations an order for foreign money from the BEP based mostly on demand (and the way a lot outdated foreign money might be destroyed attributable to put on and tear, design adjustments, and many others.). The BEP then fulfills that order and delivers the banknotes to Federal Reserve money workplaces, which then distribute them via banks, credit score unions and the like.

In the course of the 2023 fiscal yr, the BEP produced roughly 2.4 billion $1 payments, 1.3 billion $100 payments and 882 million $5 payments.

It additionally made 128 million $2 payments — clearly, not so much in comparison with different denominations.

Some years, the BEP doesn’t produce any $2 payments in any respect. Simply because the flip of the century, this occurred in 2021, 2020, 2017, 2018, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001 and 2000. (Whew.)

(Based on the newest Federal Reserve knowledge, there are 1.5 billion $2 payments in circulation. For context, there are 14.3 billion $1 payments and a whopping 18.5 billion $100 payments in circulation.)

However Roach says simply because the federal government is printing them doesn’t imply they’re getting used to purchase stuff or make change.

“It is not as widespread because the greenback invoice — or $5, $10, $20, $100 — to flow into,” Roach says. “[People] don’t see it too typically, and due to that, they get the notion that it have to be uncommon.”

Many of the payments that aren’t out within the wild are in financial institution vaults, which implies they’re not particularly troublesome to get, Treglia says. All I’ve to do is go to the financial institution and request them: an accessibility that form of takes away from the thriller of all of it.