i got this $1 back as change and kept it because I heard that the ones with the " I " stamp are rare. Can anyone confirm this? Also what should I look for in paper $ in change? I know like star notes, webnotes, missing seal,off centre. Does anyone have a list?
The letter "I" is for the Minneapolis District, which is usually just as normal or ordinary as the other 11 districts, no big deal. There are so many different things to look for in collectible currency, I recommend you read the other threads and you will get a feel what to look for.
This answer is not quite an answer to your question, but it's in the ball park. I think there is at least a possibility that Trump will replace the paper dollar bill with coins, first releasing the untold millions of SBA's and Presidents in storage. When things calm down, and he's run out of tweets about trivial beefs, he's still keen to save money, budget-wise. Many countries around the world have already gotten rid of their "unit" paper bill and replaced it with coins. It wouldn't hurt to have $500 in five brand new FRB packs of $1 bills under your mattress. Lost interest = $4 per year. Worst case, it's emergency funds, acquired at face value, and you're not likely to spend them on pizza. It will be like the hoarding of copper cents all over again, at zero risk. Also, if we replace Hamilton on the $10 bill, an uncut sheet of 32 (?), direct from the government, might be a good deal.
Remember, though, that replacing the $1 bill with a coin wouldn't save money any more. Metals prices are higher than they used to be, and processing improvement at the FRBs have caused the lifespan of a $1 bill to nearly quadruple. We passed the breakeven point around 2011; since then, keeping the $1 bill is cheaper than converting to a $1 coin. Besides, there are less than 1.3 billion $1 coins in storage, and well over 11 billion $1 bills in circulation. The numbers don't add up....
A dollar bill costs about 5.7 cents to print, and lasts about 22 months on average. A dollar coin costs about 10 cents to mint, and lasts about 30 years. A dollar coin is much, much more cost-effective. And many of those dollar coins will easily last 50-100 years.
Indeed, much-circulated clad quarters of the 1960s turn up all the time, and they're already 50+ years old.
Again, these numbers are badly out of date. The latest published figure for the average $1 bill lifespan is 70 months; for the cost of producing a $1 coin, about 33 cents. These are not small changes; overall, the cost-effectiveness ratio between the $1 bill and $1 coin has shifted by more than a factor of ten. We could have saved money by switching to a $1 coin in 1977 or 1990 or even 2000. But that window of opportunity closed several years ago. Short answer: the FRBs have higher-tech equipment that does a much better job of sorting still-usable currency from worn-out currency, so that far less still-usable currency gets prematurely shredded than once did. So the maximum lifespan of a bill hasn't gotten longer, but a much larger percentage of bills are living out their maximum lifespan, and that brings the average lifespan way up. If anyone's interested, there's a detailed cost-benefit anaylsis of the $1 coin vs. the $1 bill in this Fed working paper from December 2013.
I thought I read that it cost .38 cents to make a dollar coin, but then i saw what looked to be current information. As the cost of the dollar bill had gone up from 5.4 to 5.7 cents. 30 year estimate on the coin is way too low, as a majority of dollar coins would still be in circulation long after that if we ever used them. The cost of metals did go up, but we use such cheap crap in our coins, 33 cents to make a dollar coin that will last 50 years is still more economical.
