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Signature Set Detail: The Currency of My Life



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Set Theme:
A collection of notes showing the designs used for US currency during my life time - the money I grew up seeing and spending.

Set Description:
The goal of this set is going to be to show a collection of US Small Size Federal Reserve Notes that shows how the design and look of US Currency has changed or evolved over the course of my life.

I feel like the overall design and appearance of US currency didn't change much from around 1934 - the time of my grandparents' youth - to the start of the new millennium - when I was a teenager. The Federal Reserve Notes and the old Silver Certificates use basically the same designs, just some slightly different wording here and there. However, over the course of my lifetime, we've seen the look of American currency change and evolve considerably.

You get the big push to modernize the currency in the late 1990s, heading into the early 2000s with the rollout of new designs. The justification for changing the designs was making the money harder to counterfeit - something that was becoming a bigger problem in the last 30 years or so with "super notes" and alleged state-sponsored counterfeiting programs in some parts of the world.

I remembered hearing and reading about it when the announcements came out that the FED, the BEP and Treasury would be redesigning the notes. The initial reactions from my family when the new designs where unveiled were not all positive. I think the words "monopoly money" came up more than once. I remember not liking the new bills when I was younger but they have grown on me with time. Maybe familiarity has led to acceptance. At this point I have lived with the newer notes for longer and I have used the new notes longer than I ever used the old ones - you do not have much cash when you are six.

The origins of the idea for this set came to me around 2015, around the time I bought some of the first notes for it. It occurred to me around this time that, unless I collected and saved a few, I wasn't sure I'd be able to explain to or show my children how the money looked when I was growing up vs how it looks now or will look when they're older - assuming there is still paper money and we do not go to a cashless society or something similar - like some "digital currency," block-chain-based abomination. That started me on the road to start getting well-preserved examples of the different designs and types.



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Signature Set Details:

Slot NameCertification #Note InfoCountryGradePhoto
$1 Federal Reserve Note  
$2 Federal Reserve Note  
$5 Federal Reserve Note - "Old Style" 1049839-009 $5 1995 Small SizeUnited States67 EPQ
$10 Federal Reserve Note - "Old Style"  
$20 Federal Reserve Note - "Old Style"  
$5 Federal Reserve Note - "Modernized" 1018540-052 $5 2003 Small SizeUnited States67 EPQ
$10 Federal Reserve Note - "Modernized" 1085506-011 $10 1999 Small SizeUnited States66 EPQ
$20 Federal Reserve Note - "Modernized"  
$5 Federal Reserve Note - "Colorized" 2500991-073 $5 2006 Small SizeUnited States67 EPQ
$10 Federal Reserve Note - "Colorized" 8000211-165 $10 2004A Small SizeUnited States67 EPQ
$20 Federal Reserve Note - "Colorized"  
$1 Federal Reserve Note - "kickin' it old school" 8043783-095 $1 2009 Small SizeUnited States66 EPQ
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