Well, I took the family to the Federal Reserve of Chicago Vistor's Center. They claimed to have a guided tour everyday at 1PM, but there really wasn't a tour. Rather a woman showed up late, stood up in a small auditorium, and spewed out some facts. She also answered some questions and described a couple items that were on display, but never actually gave a tour of the exhibits. The Exhibits weren't very extensive, but they were nice. They focused mostly on Money and didn't give too much insight into the other functions of the Federal Reserve Bank. The video in the auditorium (which continuously repeats) did give a nice overview of the Federal Reserve Bank System. =The kids liked the huge pile of change in the floor (don't remember the amount, but do wonder how much silver was in there). =They also liked the exhibit about shredding currency because they got a free bag of shredded currency. =There was also the giant cube of 1 Million $1 bills (I also wondered how many web press notes were in there). =Next to the cube, they had a sealed pile of $1 Million in $20 bills. =Then next to that, they had an exhibit where you could get your picture taken with $1 Million in $100 bills (although you could see there was only a $100 bill on top and filler paper underneath, they also had 12 bricks in the briefcase as oppossed to 10). They also had some nice notes on display although there really didn't seem to be a theme to what was displayed. The displays could have done a better job of explaining the difference between the gold certificates, silver certificates, legal tenders, confederate currency, fractional notes, etc.... They had a decent exhibit on counterfeit currency, but I am still disappointed that the Federal Reserve, the BEP, and the Secret Service don't make a better effort to educate people on the UV properties of the notes. I feel that the UV properties of the Security Threads are the easiest way for a layperson to detect the average high-end counterfeit. Appropriate UV Lights can be bought for less than $100. I could not find any mention of the UV properties in their counterfeit notes exhibit. To make a long story short, it was worth the stop, but don't bother going out of your way to make the 1PM tour. It was nice to have someone there to answer questions (and the person was very knowledgable), but the presentation itself didn't really add much to the experience.
Thanks for the update. I was thinking of going there on the weekend of a business trip, but it might not be worth it.
They have some really nice notes on display and it's impressive to see so much cash in one pile. If it's convenient, I'd definitely go just to look, just don't cancel other plans to make room for it.
