LITTLE ROCK — We all get them at one time or another: a legal-tender note that’s so beaten up we wonder if we’ll be able to get rid of the thing. Not only is it so crumpled that no self-respecting vending machine would take it, but it has been taped together after some ungodly amputation befell it. We hope we can find some individual or merchant to accept it. We’ve already got the argument ready: “Look, it’s not as if it’s a counterfeit bill. It’s a real bill with issues.”
Luckily, I’ve never been given a dollar bill I couldn’t eventually pass. So I’d never given any thought to what I’d do if that were ever the case ... nor had I given real thought to the eventual fate of money once, in general, it gets too outrageously raggedy to use.
Anyone who has entertained such wonderings and gone online, might have found Lauren Covello’s story, “Where Money Goes to Die,” at foxbusiness.com.
The story leads with Ford Motor Co.’s attempts to use shredded-up, worn-out paper money to make trays and bins for its vehicles. (Ford, apparently the hippie of the car makers, is using a number of “alternative materials” in its manufacturing.) But then Covello addresses what happens to moola when it’s too raggedy to use. Age ain’t nothin’ but a number: It’s strictly the condition of the money - made of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen, so hey, it wrinkles less! - that gets it banished to the shredder.
According to another article at eHow.com on the fate of paper money, it can usually be exchanged at a bank if there’s more than half of the bill left; the bank gets rid of the money at the Federal Reserve, which recirculates money that can still be used and sets aside the hopeless cases for destruction. “If the bill is too damaged for the bank to accept, you can still try redeeming it by sending the remains of the bill to the Treasury Department and asking them to redeem it. If it is possible to determine the bill’s value and if the missing parts of the bill have not already been redeemed, the Treasury will redeem it for you.”
But this is where things get cumbersome. Covello writes that, indeed, the money can be sent to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. But a letter must be included, explaining how the bill got that way. If the bureau buys the story, a check will be sent to cover the value of the damaged bill.
The article includes a link to the bureau website, where the viewer will find out there’s such a job as “mutilated currency examiner.” These are the guys who examine the bills.
“The amount of time needed to process each case varies with its complexity and the case workload of the examiner,” according to the bureau. “Standard claims are currently taking approximately 12 to 16 weeks to process depending on the condition of the currency.”
Seems like a lot of trouble for a $1 or a $5 bill. And according to Covello and eHow, it’s the smaller bills that wear out more quickly, and therefore must be replaced more often. C’mon, guys ... as quickly and easily as currency can be printed, can’t you get me a lousy $5 bill back in under 12 weeks?
But wait. Maybe it takes the examiner that long to plow through the crazy, colorful and sarcastic excuses as to why the money is jacked up:
“Her family didn’t think I was good enough, so they came over and tried to give me a bribe to disappear. I made a big show of tearing the money up and throwing it in their faces, but after they left, I thought, ‘To heck with her. I need an X-Box.’”
“It was dark. Thought it was my rolling paper.”
“Got drunk and had some kind of Indiana Jones experience. The money came out the worse.”
“It was laundered. Not by the mob - just by my washing machine. Every other week for about a year.”
“My brother and I were fighting over it, so we went to King Solomon to see who should get it ... .”
But despite the long consumer wait and the painstaking work by stalwart examiners, the system apparently plods on with some degree of effectiveness. “The [bureau] receives approximately 20,000 mutilated currency redemption claims a year and redeems more than $30,000,000 annually,” Covello writes.
By which we can conclude that no matter how beat-up our dollar bills may be or how much inflation may have diluted their value, we’re not about to throw any money away.
At least not literally.
Legally tender e-mail welcome: [email protected]
Style, Pages 45 on 06/24/2012