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| Front of bill: The third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson |
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| Back of bill: an engraving of John Trumbull’s painting “The Signing of the Declaration of Independence. |
$2 bills are often perceived as a rare form of American currency. This perceived rarity creates a tendency for people to hoard any $2 bills encountered. This hoarding takes them out of circulation, which strengthens the perceived rarity. Since they don’t get used much, they have a longer life span, and so the Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints fewer bills to replace the worn and damaged ones. They are almost never given as change for commercial transactions, and thus consumers rarely have them on hand to spend.
The reality is that there are a LOT of these bills in circulation! According to BEP statistics, 590,720,000 Series 1976 $2 bills were printed and as of February 28, 1999, there was $1,166,091,458 worth of $2 bills in circulation worldwide.
Many Americans however, don’t even realize that $2 bills are a real form of currency. In 2002 a Taco Bell employee and his manager, not knowing that $2 bills were real, called security on a customer and attempted to have him arrested for using “funny money” to pay for his meal.
In February of 2005, a Best Buy customer attempted to pay for an electronics installation with 57 $2 bills. The cashier refused to accept them and marked them as counterfeit. The cashier then called the police and the patron was handcuffed until a Secret Service Agent arrived to clear up the issue.
In 1989, Geneva Steel used $2 bills to send a message to the surrounding Utah community - it paid its employee bonuses in $2 bills. When the bills began showing up everywhere, people recognized the importance of the company to the local economy.