I have wondered what the "collection rate" is for the U.S. $100 dollar bill after reading about ongoing problems with the South Korean 50K banknote: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2014/10/488_166633.html It seems the Koreans are considering marking issue dates on these 50K banknotes to control currency flow. I wonder what the upshot of that would be? Knowing that the US Dollar is likewise used in "underground transactions" worldwide, I wonder what the "collection rate" is for the 100 dollar bill? It seems I can't find it very easily via internet search. Does anyone here know about any resources (US Mint?) that might provide the answer?
With US 100 dollar notes - this is an exception unlike South Korea 50,000 won note. As US dollar notes as still used worldwide in many countries, ranging from South America to Russia, a lot of 100 dollar notes are actually held overseas. Figures can range from one reference to another but it makes sense that more than 50% of 100 dollar notes are held overseas. Take this reference as an example: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/12/177051690/most-100-bills-live-outside-the-u-sp However with South Korea, these 50,000 won notes rarely circulate overseas. As of why this is happening in Korea - who knows. There's always room to speculate. I presume people want to hold onto cash when they have trouble trusting the bank. Some might remember the financial crisis in 1997 / 1998 and South Korea had to be bailed out by the IMF. As of what happened during that time in South Korea - I don't know as I never lived there but you can only imagine how hard it must have been.
I read somewhere that 76% of US banknotes in are $100, but they only make up ~25% of notes circulating in the US
It my experience the $100 note in concern of collections, is very low. This may be why you aren't finding a lot of info on the web. But it really depends _why_ a note is being added to a collection. If a $100 note is saved it may be due to a major error with the BEP during production. As far as serial numbers, * notes and block letter sets, most people are going to stick to $1s as the cost up front is 1/100th of what it would be for a $100 bill. Not many people can afford to collect $100s let alone a bunch of them. If you check out the BEP or FRB web sites, you should be able to find continuing information and stats as far as whats out there for %age of bills each year (and month for some things) That said, we do have access to monthly production of our US currency, but that will not indicate date of issue.
