Where's George?

I normally don't post on the paper currency forum of CoinTalk, but today I found a $1 bill with a stamp on it that said:"Track this bill at www.wheresgeorge.com"

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

The site is interesting in that you can follow the progress of a given bill as it works its way through circulation by entering the serial # and the bill series as printed on the front of the bill into the database provided on the web site. So far my bill has only made its way around the local area where I live.

Don't know if any of you have heard of this, or are interested, but I thought it was pretty cool.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Been there done that. Interesting sight. Make a list of the bills that you find and keep it to check on them later. The ones that I have found, I did not make a list and later cannot find them. The sight, I have some trouble locating what I'm searching for, and all sight are different. -O)

 

Race: WG has been around for about a decade.

 

Here is my where's george. I took a scan before passing it on. I got it in Thailand via Hawaii! Fascinating exercise but I don't have the time at the moment to check it's progress to date.

 

I've gotten two in the last couple years. When I checked them, they were from the area.

 

I like to save them and re-release them when I travel.

I also log notes without marking them as I do not wish to deface the notes with those hideous stamps, but admire the program.

 

i'm the same way. no markings unless i receive it that way.

 

I also save them to spend when I travel. I live in Colorado and have spent WG notes in Georgia, New York, Texas, Alaska and other states far from where I received the notes.

 

I will pass them on but can't stand the defacing stamps on them. Most of mine have almost always been locally though.

 

We have a similar thing in Europe, it's called EuroBillTracker. And most trackers there would agree that, while stamping a note may get people's attention, it is not exactly a good idea: A note that has such stamps is more likely to be taken out of circulation than a "non-stamped" one.

So I do not mark or stamp mine. Sometimes I fold the ones that I have already entered, or put a tiny pencil dot in a corner, so that I know which ones have already been entered. Once in a while I actually have a "hit". Of course it is nice to see a note travel from, say, Finland to Spain. But most of my hits are in the BE/DE/NL area, maybe 500 km from here, often less than that.

Christian

 

Thanks for giving me a European perspective to this phenomenon.

 

I released a few last year and I never got any hits on them. Guess people around here don't care.

 

I might be a minority in thinking this, but I have never liked WG myself... but after reading this thread, i figured my dislike of WG is because of the stamps - and really only because of them. I never imagined folks logging and tracking notes without stamping. silly me. i have to now admit, i like the idea of WG (or EBT in chrisild's area) alot better without the stamps!

how simple a paradigm shift can be lol

 

havent got one in awhile but the sight is fun if you have the time to keep checking

 

Yeah, that's my issue, too. I've released a number over the years, but not a single hit on the website. I'm not so concerned about the rubber stamp -- there are *billions* of $1 bills out there and far more of them get defaced in other ways. Unless we're talking about stamping a star radar note, what's the big deal? If this gets non-collectors to pay a little attention to our currency, more power to them.

 

Admittedly I don't really know how this works in the US, and I don't use wheresgeorge.com as they block many users or entire ISPs. But isn't part of the fun that you have a hit once in a while? Now if (and as I wrote, this may or may not be common in your country) stamped or otherwise modified notes are pulled out of circulation very quickly, would such a stamp not defeat the purpose? May not be an issue with $1 notes, as they have a short life anyway, but others ...

Christian

 

Yes, that *is* part of the fun. I would say all of the fun. But, at least in the US, I don't think marked notes get pulled from circulation nearly as frequently (I assume you mean by banks).

What I don't understand is how a non-marked note would *ever* get a hit. The odds of a second person pulling an unmarked note at random and entering it on the site are astronomical. You would need a very large number of people in a very small geographic area checking every single note, every single day.

My view is that those who like to play "Where's George" get a feeling of camaraderie by adding the URL to the notes -- they are part of a larger community of participants. They actually have a search image for those stamped notes and when they find one, it's a connection to someone else. I don't think they see it as defacement at all.

 

A few years ago I tracked one that had been right here in Las Vegas for over a year. lol I was thinking with all the tourism that it likely had travelled to many far and exotic places other than the corner 7-11. lol Guess what happens here, really does stay here ?

 

At least the cash stays!

I was under the impression that WG was a study of the natural movement of bills, so traveling with them on purpose skews the data.

 

Was it stamped?