Do you see that dollar bill in your wallet or your purse? That one little dollar bill could actually be worth thousands of dollars, and you don’t even know it.
In this article I’m going to be going over some rare one dollar bills that sold for a lot of money that you could potentially have, and they don’t even need to be in that good of condition.
Condition Is King
The first thing you need to know when it comes to the value of your one dollar bill is that, as I like to tell my readers, condition is king. What do I mean by that? Essentially, the better condition your paper money is in, the more money it’s going to be worth.
So if you come across a rare one dollar bill, the last thing you want to do is fold it, tear it, get it damaged or dirty or anything like that. You essentially want to keep it as flat as possible.
If you don’t have anything to keep it in in the meantime, just put it in between a book or something heavy and make sure none of the corners are folded over.
Serial Number One Note: Sold for $2,875
As you can see from the condition, this banknote is pretty beat up. It’s pretty cool to see this, because when you see something like this, it means that it passed a lot of people’s hands before someone saw it and said, “Hey, something’s pretty rare here. I think I should hold on to this bill.”
As you look closer at the bill, you can see that the serial number on this bill is a serial number one. The chances of you finding a serial number one bill is pretty rare, but there are other rare serial numbers out there that are worth money, not just the serial number one. But without a doubt, serial number one banknotes will always be worth a good amount of money.
Just imagine, this note sold for $2,875. If this note was in better condition, it would have brought so much more money.
But during the time period, the people that were handling this note had no idea what it was worth until someone finally saw it and said, “Hey, I’m gonna hold on to this bill because it’s pretty cool, it has a serial number one.”
So what you need to know is, if you have a rare serial number like this one, you could have a note with a lot of money.
1969 Solid Number Two Serial Number: Sold for $3,840
Here’s a 1969 one dollar bill. This one was graded by PMG a 64 EPQ. What you need to know is that 70 is the highest grade, and anything above 60 is uncirculated, pretty much meaning there are no folds on the bill. It never went out into circulation.
So essentially, someone went to a bank, probably, and got a brick of these bills and was looking through them to see if there were any rare serial numbers, and they came across this note that had a solid number two serial number. This note sold for $3,840.
Now just imagine coming across a one dollar bill with a serial number like this and being able to turn that one dollar bill into almost four thousand dollars, just like this person did.
Star Note and Web Note: Sold for $4,200
Here is one that you guys are really going to need to pay attention to, because this is a small feature that allowed this note to sell for $4,200.
It’s not because of the star at the end of the serial number. That is one thing that helped to contribute to the value, but it is not the main reason. There’s a combination of why this sold for so much money.
It is important to know what the star means. Long story short, during the printing process, if there was an error or some sort of damage or something happening to the sheet of notes, that sheet would get destroyed and they would make a new sheet, and they would add a star at the end of the serial number.
That star is so they know for bookkeeping purposes which sheet was damaged and destroyed. But we think that they’re cool because they have a star, and the print runs are relatively, almost always, smaller.
That, in combination with the high grade of 67, remember the highest grade we can get is 70, the biggest reason why this note sells for so much money is because this is considered a web note.
I’m going to show a few examples of what you need to be comparing to. If you look at Washington’s face, it’s going to look a bit different than a normally issued note.
Also, the plate positions on a web note, there’s going to be just a number, and on a regular note there’s going to be a number and a letter. It’s going to look completely different, but it is a very small feature that can mean the difference of a lot of money.
So if you have a web note, especially a web note that’s a star as well, you could have a note that’s worth a lot of money, because this note sold for $4,200.
Solid Number Nine Serial Number: Sold for $27,600
I’m not going to spend too much time on this note, but essentially, this one’s not even graded, but it was considered to be gem crisp uncirculated, meaning there’s no folds on the bill.
This note has a solid number nine serial number, and it sold for $27,600. That’s right, guys, this note sold for twenty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.