A $10,000 Great Depression era, uncirculated bill in perfect condition sold at a recent auction for almost $500,000. The bill features Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and it was sold at the Long Beach Expo U.S. Coins Signature Auction, located in Dallas, Texas. The $480,000 purchase breaks the previous record of $384,000 from September 2020, USA Today reported. The bill had been decommissioned in 1969, which made the $100 bill the highest monetary note issued in the United States.
According to the Museum of American Finance, the $10,000 bill was the largest denomination ever publicly circulated, as a larger $100,000 denomination was only used by banks.
“Large-denomination notes always have drawn the interest of collectors of all levels,” Dustin Johnston, vice president of Currency at Heritage Auctions, said in a press release. “The $10,000 trails only the $100,000 gold certificate issued in 1934, and of the 18 examples graded by PMG, this example is tied for the highest-graded.”
Other items also went for large sums of money, as a $20 dollar coin minted in 1899 sold for $468,000, and a $5,000 note sold for $300,000. At the end of the auction, which concluded on Sept 24, a total of $15,545,589 had been pulled in.
The 1899 coin featured a portrait of the head of the Statue of Liberty, and around 30 still exist. Todd Imhof, executive vice president of Heritage, remarked in the press release, “It takes an extraordinary coin to rise to the top of an auction with such consistent high quality, and this 1899 double eagle is that kind of coin.”
High denomination bills were printed throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s but were discontinued by the U.S. Treasury because they were not often used by the public. In 2009, the number of $10,000 bills was around 336, the number of $5,000 bills was around 342, and the number of $1,000 bills was around 165,362; which explains the premium price fetched for these uncirculated and pristine larger denomination bills.
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