Fancy Serial Numbers: Dollar Bills Worth Money Hiding in Your Wallet

hello everybody silverpicker here and welcome to the silver picker squad now today's video is all about making money with fancy serial numbers now we're talking the most unique and unusual serial numbers printed on dollar bills that can make you big bucks and as you can see to get into the fancy mindset i'm wearing my fancy blazer i'm wearing my fancy watch i got my fancy pinky ring nothing says fanciness like a pinky ring and i've got my fancy cup of tea in my fancy galaxy morgan mug now if you want to be fancy as well you guys can get your very own fancy galaxy morgan mug in many different fancy colors just using the links below to my teespring store and guess what not only does it support my channel but it'll also help you become fancier and fancier and fancier [Music] but in all seriousness please buy a mug and support my channel ok ok in actual all seriousness hunting for fancy serial numbers is an amazing way for new collectors or people that want to get in the business of buying and selling precious metals coins and banknotes to get started and in this video i'm going to teach you exactly how to identify the most common and most popular fancy serial numbers figure out which ones are worth holding on to and which ones really are better to be spent back into circulation i'm going to teach you how to get these bank notes at face value and most important and most exciting how you can sell them and flip them for a profit if you enjoy this video i would really appreciate it if you'd consider hitting the like button and if you're feeling real generous maybe you'd even consider hitting that big old red subscribe button and the little bell next to it so you're notified whenever i post a new video i would be eternally grateful but enough with the jibber jabber let's get started with that fanciness so what are we even talking about here well every single dollar bill whether it's a one or a 100 is printed with a unique eight-digit serial number on it that's right every single bill is unique there are no two banknotes in the world that are alike and what the real purpose of this is it helps the government track where the money flows and it helps prevent theft and counterfeiting and while to the untrained eye these series of eight digits might just look like random numbers to the collector some arrangements of these numbers actually can make the bills not just worth a little bit more than face value but even thousands of dollars worth more than the number printed on that bill also i should point out that even though we're going to be focusing on u.s bank notes in this video every single banknote in the entire world has a serial number on it and therefore has the potential for fancy serial numbers so if you're watching from somewhere outside the us first of all i'd love to know where so drop that in the comments below but you can also apply everything i'm talking about in this video to your local currency so the united states produces literally billions of banknotes every single year but only a tiny fraction of them actually have a collector's premium and those are the ones you want to pull out of circulation and like i said those can be worth literally thousands of dollars so you're going to want to pay attention so i'm now going to show you the nine main types of fancy serial numbers that you should look for and pull out of circulation now it's important to note that i am not going to be focusing on star notes or error notes if you want to learn more about star notes i made a video on it a few weeks ago and you can check it out in the card over here i've never made a video on error notes so stay tuned so anyway let's get started with our first fancy serial number and what better way to start than well with number one so what you see here is an extreme example of what's called a low serial number banknote and those are any bank notes that have one or two non-zero digits at the end of the serial number so that's any bill numbered 1 through 99. now finding any bank note with a serial number under 100 is going to be exceedingly difficult but if you do you're looking at some big bucks now of course any of the bills we're talking about the value is highly dependent aside from the fancy serial number on the actual year the actual print size and of course the actual condition of the particular bill this heavily circulated 10 bill from 2013 sold for 220 because it has the serial number of zero zero zero zero zero zero seven so it is a very low serial number james bond as well but it sold for 220 which is phenomenal it's 22 times face value but because of the condition and because it is number seven and not number one it didn't sell for thousands this one dollar bill however which has the coveted serial number one from the same year which is in much better condition actually sold for over eight thousand dollars so while there's a huge difference between the values of these two banknotes one thing's for sure if you find any low digit serial numbers you're going to want to keep them no matter what now if you've gone and paused this video and ran to get your wallet or your banknote collection to see if you have any low serial numbers and you're excited to find that you have some but instead of having two non-zero digits it has three or four don't be disappointed because even though those are not worth hundreds or thousands of dollars more than their face value those can still be worth five ten or even twenty dollars worth more than face value so if you've got a one dollar bill and it's number 999 that doesn't mean you should spend it still worth holding on to so the second fancy serial number we're going to be looking at is the inverse to the low serial numbers and that is of course high serial numbers and by high serial numbers we mean any bank note that has a serial number that starts with at least four nines but if it has five six seven or even all solid nines that is a special special bill now unfortunately because bank notes made in the modern era don't usually have print runs that are that high they're really really hard to find in most cases however if you've got any old banknotes or silver certificates or something like that definitely take the time to look through those because you might just find a gem hiding in your collection as you can see here in most cases the high serial numbers are worth far less than the super low serial numbers like this one dollar bill from 1963 only sold for 21 dollars and 50 cents still 21.5 times face value ain't too bad but it's not the thousands of dollars we were talking about and while this set of twelve ten dollar bills sold for two thousand dollars that's still only about 167 dollars per bill still way more than face value and worth holding on to but not quite as good as those super low serial numbers the next fancy serial number is called solids and that is basically a solid row of the same number so those are exceedingly rare because there can only be 10 of each per run of bills so that means all zeros all ones all twos all threes all the way up through nines so there's literally only ten per print run at most and that makes them worth a lot of money even in super super ratty shape this crumpled up five dollar bill with solid sevens sold for nearly eight hundred dollars but this pristine one dollar bill with solid threes sold for three thousand five hundred dollars not too shabby at all the nice thing about solids is that they're really easy to spot when you're searching for them even almost solids like this 10 bill can also sell for a pretty good premium so they're worth holding on to as well especially the ones that are aesthetically pleasing like this one and while we're on the subject of solids do me a solid by hitting the like button and the subscribe button now i know that a lot of you watching are not actually subscribed and you guys are missing out on tons of awesome numismatic information so do us both a solid by hitting that subscribe button and that like button next up are binaries and trinarys binaries are bills with serial numbers composed of only two different digits and trinaries of course are bills with serial numbers composed of only three different digits now a true binary is bills that have serial numbers composed only of zeros and ones but any two numbers can be a binary so 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 could be a binary or the same number but with a different order also a binary now a trinary could be two two two two two one three or it could be two three one one three two two with binaries and trinaries the order of the digits doesn't matter i think you get the point the value of binaries and trinarys is highly correlated with the aesthetic beauty of the actual serial number so let's play a game what do you think is worth more a serial number of one one one one one one one two or a serial number of one one one one one one seven pretty obvious right the one with a one and a two at the end versus the one and the seven because the one two feels like a natural progression and is therefore more aesthetically pleasing okay let's try this again which of these bills the 50 or the 100 sold for more money at auction i'll give you a second to log your guesses put it in the comments below i'll give you a second well if you guessed the 50 you were right the 50 even though it's a lower denomination than the hundred because it is bookended with ones and only zeros in the middle it is much more aesthetically pleasing than the hundred dollar bill so the fifty dollar bill sold for nine hundred dollars at auction while the 100 sold for only 432. still both of them are good good finds now before we move on i'm going to point out that there are lots and lots of different subtypes of all of these different serial number categories but they're really just the same thing that have different aesthetically pleasing components to them so i'll give you one example but you can look up the rest on your own and that example is double quads double quads is when you have four of the same number followed by four of a different number so for example three three three three nine nine nine nine that's an example of a double quad but if you really look close it's really just a fancy example of a binary so really you're looking at a binary that has an additional premium because it has a really aesthetically pleasing organization so i don't want you guys to get too bogged down in all of these subtypes because at the beginning you're going to go crazy trying to remember all of them and it's not going to be fun so at the beginning hold off on the subtypes and as you get to become a fancy serial number expert you can then go more and more and more into those different subtypes next up are repeaters and those are easy enough to remember because well they have repeating digits so an example could be one two one two one two one two or it could be four digits repeating one three three one one three three one both of those have a premium but can you guess which one has more of a premium so again with repeaters let aesthetics be your guide in terms of value this 100 dollar bill with a super repeater so that's just two repeating digits sold for 900 while this 50 bill with four digits repeating like in that first example the one three three one one three three one it only sold for 79 which is just 29 above face so a huge huge difference between two repeating digits and four repeating digits the next fancy serial number to keep on your radar is well a radar node a radar note is any serial number that can be read both forwards and backwards the same kind of like the word radar or in other words they are palindrome notes well at least i think they should be called palindrome notes but i don't make the rules so radars they are well a great example of a radar is this bill which sold for 763 dollars and that has a serial number of zero zero seven seven zero zero and as you can see and you've probably noticed that there's quite a bit of overlap in these fancy serial number categories because not only is this a radar but it is also a binary so let that be a lesson the more fanciness you can squeeze into one serial number the better now before we get to my favorite type of fancy serial number we're going to talk about my least favorite fancy serial number and those are flippers flippers also called rotators are similar to radars but instead of being able to be read front to back they can be read upside down as well now only serial numbers that contain zeros ones sixes eights and nines can even be counted as flippers because those are the only numbers that look like themselves or other numbers when they're flipped over so a serial number like six six six six nine nine nine nine could be flipped over and the sixes turn into nines and the nines turn into sixes and it can be read the same way it's kind of cool it's kind of novel but to me it's not that exciting and i don't love them but again like i said i don't make the rules so people pay big bucks for them or uh do they because this 2017 10 flipper sold for only 25 practically not even worth listing on ebay maybe i'm on to something with these flippers not being as fancy as they seem and now my favorite fancy serial number is the ladder node now there are both ascending and descending ladders and essentially what they are are a string of numbers that go in consecutive order so one two three four five six seven eight would be an ascending ladder and eight seven six five four three two one would be a descending ladder to me they are just super aesthetically beautiful they're really cool and of course they're worth a lot of money now there are of course broken ladders or partial ladders and those are worth a little bit of a premium but nothing like the real mccoy of a real ladder node this 100 bill with an ascending ladder sold for 4 500 imagine pulling that out of circulation not a bad payday and last but not least are date notes date notes are notes that actually form a date when you read them now i'm not that into them but they do sell for some pretty good money so they are still worth pulling out of circulation now there are two types of date notes there are dates that are historically significant and dates that are personally significant to an individual an example of a historic date that would be significant would be on at least on an american note would be 0704 1776 can you guess why well that is july 4th 1776 which is american independence day so if you can find a banknote with one of those serial numbers those can actually go for pretty good money other ones that are more for personal use are people's birthdays or anniversaries and simply they just want to have them because it's special to them a lot of people carry those around as what's called a pocket piece so they just carry it around with them at all times because they enjoy seeing it and that's great and if you find a good birth date or an anniversary date you can sell that to somebody and make a couple bucks but there are some cool ways of getting creative and a lot of this would basically be marketing so for example you might find a one dollar bill with the zero two two two one seven three two serial number and that would be of course february 2nd 1732 which is george washington's birthday and having george washington's birthday is the serial number on a one dollar bill featuring george washington could actually be worth quite a bit of money see if you can play some games like that with other presidents or other figures on banknotes or around the world with other world leaders there might be some really cool things you can come up with if you do come up with something interesting let me know in the comments below okay that is a lot of information to be thrown at you and if you're a beginner your head is probably swimming so these are the nine different fancy serial numbers we talked about so take a second to review them and if you want to re-watch the video it might be worth your time so now that you've got the knowledge and you know what the different types of fancy serial numbers are well how do you actually get them out of circulation for face value well of course you can rely on getting them in change but that's a fairly slow and luck-based process you can of course improve your odds through a practice called bank strap searching bank strap searching is exactly like coin roll hunting if you're familiar with that practice essentially what you do is you go to your bank you withdraw the bills in whatever denominations you want for whatever sum of money you want say a thousand dollars in singles then you go home you look through each bill pull out the ones that have fancy serial numbers and then just deposit the rest back into your account effectively allowing you to take as many bills with fancy serial numbers out of circulation for just face value as you want with zero risk to yourself now if you've been watching my channel for a long time you know that i'm not a huge fan of quinoa hunting but every now and again i really do enjoy a relaxing bank strap search it's easy on the fingers easy on the eyes and you can find some really really cool stuff so eventually i will do some videos on that as well so stay tuned for those now once you've found some fancy serial numbers or things that you think might be fancy serial numbers go over to either ebay sold listings or heritage auctions or another reputable site to see if you can find some comparable items that sold that are similar enough to yours that you can get an idea of the price you can also of course take your bills to your local coin store and ask an expert there or if you don't have one of those in your area or because of what's going on in the world right now you don't have access you can post them on a coin forum like cointalk.com or if you're one of my patrons you can post it in the coin questions channel on my private discord server and if you're not yet a patron i would love it if you'd consider supporting my mission of informing educating and entertaining people all about coin collecting precious metals investing and even personal finance and if you are interested there are links to my patreon page below and that's just patreon.com silverpicker so i would love it if you'd consider pledging to that cause and once you've got a sense of how much your bills are worth now it's time to decide whether to keep them in your own collection or to sell them if you want to keep them in your own collection great who knows maybe they'll be worth more someday when you're ready to sell but if you're ready to sell right now the best place to do it is by selling directly to another collector whether that's through a coin club that you belong to or on a facebook group or even craigslist you're going to get the best bang for your buck out of that but if you want to have a wider spread audience or you want to have the luck of the auction help you and see maybe you can get even more money than you expected then ebay or heritage auctions are awesome opportunities you will lose about 10 to 20 percent of the value through fees but you'll have access to a much much broader customer base and you may end up making more money overall so that's about it you now have all the information you need to start collecting or flipping banknotes with rare serial numbers for a profit and it is so much fun to get into and yes it is highly addictive now if you like the video again please give it a like subscribe and of course share it with your friends and if you found something really interesting put it in the comments below i would love to hear your hunting stories and of course i have a lot more awesome coin related and precious metal related stuff coming down the pike so stay tuned and until then silver picker out a huge huge thank you to all of my wonderful patrons many of you have taken advantage of the discounted annual membership rate so if you're not yet a patron but are interested i've just unlocked a 10 discount for anyone who signs up using the annual membership can't wait to see you in the discord [Music] [Music]

Channel: Silverpicker

Views: 53,096

Rating: 4.9247427 out of 5

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Id: 7f6XgGqHq7I

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020