You might want to look closely at your $1 bills before using them. According to Wealthynickel.com, they could actually be worth a lot of money because of a mistake that was made in 2014 and 2016. Bills are supposed to be printed with unique serial numbers, but batches of dollar bills were printed with duplicate serial numbers, meaning they should actually be considered counterfeit.
However, because such a mistake is so uncommon, currency collectors might be willing to pay up to $150,000, as per Wealthynickel.com.
What are the chances of finding such a bill? According to wealthynickel.com, there are 6.4 million pairs of $1 bills with this mistake. For reference, the Federal Reserve reports that there are billions of $1 bills in circulation.
If you find a bill with this type of error, you'll also need to find its matching pair. Wealthynickel.com reported that only nine pairs have been found so far.
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If you want to inspect your $1 bills to see if you might be able to make more money off of the banknote, there are a few different things to look for.
According to Wealthynickel.com, the first thing to pay attention to is the Series date. This can be found on the far right of the banknote, next to the image of George Washington. If it says "Series 2013," you might have one of these special banknotes — but there are a couple of other things to look for as well.
You'll also want to check to see if there is a “B” Federal Reserve Seal above the serial number.
When looking at the serial number, you should see a "*" at the end of it and it should also be between between B00000001* – B00250000* or B03200001*-B09600000*, as per Wealthynickel.com.
Project 2013B, which keeps a database of serial numbers, says that just one of these misprinted bills might not be worth much, but collectors are likely to pay a lot more for a matching pair.
In addition to bills that were the result of printing errors, collectors might also be interested in some other uncommon bills.
According to HowStuffWorks, some bills are printed with a star at the end of the serial number. These are actually "replacement notes" — and they're probably not worth more than ordinary notes, though they might look a bit more interesting. However, if the serial number looks "interesting" (such as 00000001 or 999999999), according to HowStuffWorks, collectors might be interested in that bill as well.
