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Message:: [QUOTE="Numbers, post: 328730, member: 11668"]No, it's because that FRB document only discusses $5, $10, and $20 notes.  (Notice that it only lists wear standards for those three denominations, too; that doesn't mean $50's and $100's can be arbitrarily worn and still circulate.)  Just by watching how quickly the old-style notes disappeared from circulation, it's clear that the small-head $50's and $100's were retired by the Fed.  In 1995 it was easy to pull even 1934 $100's from circulation; now it's tough to find anything pre-1996. Interestingly, the 1996-generation notes don't seem to be getting the same treatment; there are still plenty of pre-Kodachrome $20's out there, even four-plus years after the Kodachrome version was issued.  My guess is that this reflects the fact that the Kodachrome redesign was primarily cosmetic and did not represent a major increase in security the way the 1996 redesign did. (Oh, and about the red-seal-$100-note topic higher up this thread: the requirement for USNs to be kept in circulation was repealed in 1994.  Currency books are horrible about updating those "trivia" sections.  Until quite recently, many of them still pointed out that a star note was used for the 100,000,000th note of each block--despite the fact that blocks of 100,000,000 notes haven't been used since 1977.)[/QUOTE]