US Banknotes

To clear things up, Joseph W. Barr was Secretary of the Treasury for more than one day. He served in the Johnson Administration from December 1968 through January 1969, when Richard Nixon was inaugurated. While his remains the shortest tenure of any Treasury Secretary up to this writing, it was far longer than 24 hours.

Because $1 bills are so heavily used and wear out faster than other denominations, the Treasury had to print new ones during Barr's tenure. There was a lot of guessing that those bills would be rare but instead the Treasury kept printing them long after Barr left office. Nearly half a billion $1 bills with his signature were made, short-circuiting attempts by speculators to profit by hoarding them. However many people were (and still are) unaware that so many "Barr notes" were printed and keep any that they might find.

After leaving office, Barr served in leadership positions (chairman, president, etc.) at various banks until his retirement. He died in 1996 at the age of 78.

To clear things up:

• Bills are printed. The US Mint only makes coins.
• There isn't a mint in Atlanta. Atlanta is the location of one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks that distribute Federal Reserve Notes.

However if your bill has a seal with the letter "F" in a circle with the words "Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Georgia", its date can't be 1953 because no $5 Federal Reserve Notes carry that date. Please check the date on your bill again and look at the question "What is the value of a (date) US 5 dollar bill?" for more information.

There's a novelty item that LOOKS like a $1M bill, but the largest denomination of REAL money currently printed in the U.S. is $100. Any U.S. $1,000,000 bills you see are worth about as much as the paper they're printed on.

At one time, however, it also included five larger denominations. High-denomination currency was prevalent from the very beginning of U.S. Government issue (1861). $500, $1,000, and $5,000 interest bearing notes were issued in 1861, and $10,000 gold certificates arrived in 1865. There are many different designs and types of high-denomination notes.

The high-denomination bills were issued in a small size in 1929, along with the $1 through $100 denominations. Their designs were as follows:

* The $500 bill featured a portrait of William McKinley

* The $1,000 bill featured a portrait of Grover Cleveland

* The $5,000 bill featured a portrait of James Madison

* The $10,000 bill featured a portrait of Salmon P. Chase

* The $100,000 bill featured a portrait of Woodrow Wilson

The reverse designs featured abstract scrollwork with ornate denomination identifiers. All were printed in green, except for the $100,000. The $100,000 is an odd bill, in that it was not generally issued, and printed only as a gold certificate of Series of 1934. These gold certificates (of denominations $100, $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000) were issued after the gold standard was repealed and gold was compulsorily redeemed by presidential order of Franklin Roosevelt on March 9, 1933 (see United States Executive Order 6102), and thus were only used for intra-government transactions. They are printed in orange on the back, and are illegal to own. All known pieces are in government museums. This series was discontinued in 1940. The other bills are printed in black and green.

Printing of other high-denomination bills was discontinued in 1945, but the bills continued in use until 1969, when circulation of high-denomination bills was halted in 1969 by executive order of President Richard Nixon, in an effort to combat organized crime. $5,000 and $10,000 bills had effectively disappeared well before then: there are only about 200 $5,000 and 300 $10,000 bills known, of all series since 1861. Most of the $10,000 bills are due to the preservation of 100 ($1,000,000) of them by Benny Binion, the owner of Binion's Horseshoe casino in Nevada. For many years, they were displayed in a glass case in the casino. The case is no longer there, and the bills were sold to collectors.

The introduction of the electronic money system has made large-scale cash transactions obsolete; when combined with concerns about counterfeiting and the use of cash in unlawful activities such as the illegal drug trade, it is unlikely that the U.S. government will re-issue large denomination currency in the near future.

In March 2004, Alice Regina Pike attempted to use a $1,000,000 bill with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front to purchase $1671.55 in goods from a Wal-Mart in Covington, Georgia, for which she was then arrested.

Though not actually meant to be used as actual legal tender, Christian evangelist Ray Comfort's ministry, Living Waters Publications, produces another fake $1,000,000 bill, which is in reality a Christian gospel tract.

Various $3 bills have been released, generally poking fun at politicians or celebrities such as Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, or Hillary Clinton; this likely stems from the American idiom "queer as a three-dollar bill."

See the related links for more information.

Yes there is, however it is U.S Mint only to deliver between countries, not avalible to the public.

If my history serves me right $20,000 was the highest bill ever in circulation, but it was taken out because too much wealth could be contained in a small space which facilitated the Prohibition - so it was removed and $100 became the biggest bill that is used.

Printing of large bills ($500 and above) ended in 1945 due to lack of use. In 1969 President Nixon issued an order discontinuing their distribution through the banking system as a way of com batting money laundering by organized crime. In spite of the possible current usefulness of larger denominations due to inflation, the same concern about money laundering now applies to terrorists and drug dealers so there is little chance that anything larger than a $100 bill will be printed in the foreseeable future.