I received a $1 bill in change that had a WheresGeorge.com stamp on it this past weekend. In my 20 yrs of collecting mostly us coins and also searched for many Barr,Star, etc dollars I have never come across wheresgeorge. Went to the website to do some research and found out this was started in 1998. My dollar was a very new one as research said that it had been only 187 miles from Jacksonville,Fl to Spring Hill,Fl. Is this trend starting back .
starting back?? dont think it ever stopped... i post notes when i get them, which is not very often.... oh, and i have the t-shirt..
Approximately how many have you found and what part of the country (state) usually spots the most. I read where some people make their own stamp or simply write on the bill ( even though it’s illegal to do so)
It is not illegal to mark notes. It is illegal to render them unfit for use. Yes, that's sort of a gray area but as long as it isn't obscene, messing with elements that cause people to think it's a different denomination, or advertising then it's usually not a problem. The secret service investigated wheresgeorge in 2000 and determined that since the sight isn't selling anything (it runs on banner ads and donations, and it doesn't sell the rubber stamps), it is not in violation. If anybody finds one, go ahead and enter it. The site is completely anonymous unless you want to register and track your notes. Plus you'll probably make somebody's day. And if you think it's a dumb thing to do, just spend it. (yes, I'm a closet georger)
I would say you have quite likely encountered them before but just hadn't noticed them. I recently found the two "wilds" in the attached picture. The one with the blue URL stamp came from a cash dispenser at a local casino; the other was found in a strap of ones from a bank. As Oldhoopster has mentioned, it is not illegal to write on U.S. currency or to stamp them so long as one doesn't have the "intention" of rendering them unfit for use. Also, to answer your question about where they are found most frequently, I will say from my experience 10 years ago I would find an average of two wilds in a $100 strap of ones back East but in the West I would find one out of an average of every thousand notes searched. I never understood why but presumed there were simply more Where's George participants back East than there are in places like California. Fast forward to today and there has been a noticeable decline of Where's George notes found across the board from coast to coast over the past few years. These days I personally find a wild out of every 3-5000 $1 notes that I go through. A lot of speculation has occurred as to why this is the case but the theory that has the most traction, and the one that I find to be the most credible, is that the government has updated their fitness-scanning equipment so stamped/marked bills are no longer reissued like they used to be. As an aside, it is common for Where's George participants to stamp their notes in the margins (especially in red) with the idea being the scanning equipment won't see the stamps and issue them back into circulation. My suspicion is that the updated equipment now checks the margins (and can now detect the color red) along with the rest of the note and will reject these notes for circulation as well. I base this on the fact that I can go through whole thousand note bricks of FRB-filtered notes and I will hardly ever find a note with any kind of writing or stamps on them like I used to in the past.
I have looked up maybe 20 over the years. None had much history. I don't think many take the time to look them up and post the find to the site.
