The 10 Rarest and Most Expensive US Banknotes in History and What They Are Worth
When I was a little boy, I got my hands on a two-dollar U.S. bill featuring Thomas Jefferson, and it looked so different from all the money I had seen before that I spent a long time staring at it. On the back was an engraving based on John Trumbull’s painting Declaration of Independence, showing several dozen delegates to the Continental Congress filling the room, while the five authors of the Declaration presented its draft to President of Congress John Hancock:
Nobody among the boys I knew had ever seen a bill like that, and I was absolutely convinced that I was holding an extraordinary rarity that would be worth a fortune many years later, as long as I kept it safe. As an adult, I learned that there are now about 1.8 billion two-dollar bills in circulation and that they were still being printed as recently as last year, so getting rich from my discovery was not meant to be. But the interest in money with a history behind it that began back then never went away, and in this article I want to look at ten banknotes that truly became the rarest and most expensive in U.S. history.
The record belongs to an 1890 $1,000 Treasury Note that collectors nicknamed the “Grand Watermelon” because of the striped zeros on the back. In 2014, it sold at a Heritage auction for $3.29 million, even though the exact same note had gone under the hammer in 1970 for just $11,000. To someone used to calculating returns on stocks and bonds, that kind of trajectory seems almost unbelievable, and it is hardly surprising that rare American banknotes are increasingly being considered an alternative investment. They are especially appealing to people who are fascinated by U.S. history itself and who care about the story behind a piece in their collection, whether that story involves the Civil War or Roosevelt’s gold reform.
This market has some peculiarities that are worth knowing about in advance. Some of the banknotes on our list exist in only two or three examples, most of which have long been held by the Smithsonian Institution and Federal Reserve collections. That means an opportunity to buy one may come once in a generation, if it comes at all. One of them, in fact, cannot legally be owned by private individuals. Others, such as the $5,000 and $10,000 large-denomination notes from the 1920s and 1930s, appear at auction regularly. There, everything comes down to your budget and how well you understand condition, varieties, and the provenance of a particular note, because those details determine whether you are paying a fair price or overpaying by several times. Below are the ten rarest and most expensive banknotes in U.S. history, along with the prices they have fetched at auction and the story behind each one. Which of them interests you as an investor and which simply as a history lover is for you to decide.
1. 1890 $1,000 Treasury Note, “Grand Watermelon,” $3.29 million
These banknotes came about because of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which required the Treasury to buy silver every month and pay for it with new paper notes. Holders of the notes could exchange them for coins, and the resulting rush to exchange them for gold depleted the Treasury’s reserves, becoming one of the causes of the Panic of 1893. The law was repealed that same year, and production of the notes ended. Only seven examples have survived, three of them in private hands.
The nickname came from the huge striped zeros on the back, which looked like watermelons. The front features General George Meade, the victor at Gettysburg. The record-setting example sold for $3,290,000 in January 2014. Before that, it had last appeared at auction in 1970, when it sold for just $11,000. Another “Watermelon” became the first banknote to break the $1 million mark when it sold for $1,092,500 at a Lyn Knight auction. Thirteen years later, it was worth $2.04 million.
2. 1891 $1,000 Treasury Note, $2.585 million
A year after the “Watermelon,” the Treasury redesigned the back of these notes. It is generally believed that the elaborate ornamentation was replaced with a simpler design with more open space to make counterfeits easier to spot. The beautiful zeros disappeared, but the note itself became even rarer.
Heritage sold it in April 2013 for $2.585 million. At the time, only two examples of this type were known to exist, and the other was not available to private collectors.
3. 1863 $100 Gold Certificate, $2.115 million
This was a product of the Civil War. The North financed the war with paper “greenbacks,” which traded at a discount to gold, while customs duties were required by law to be paid in gold. Gold certificates allowed banks and importers to avoid transporting heavy coins and instead make payments using a receipt for gold deposited with the Treasury.
Three examples are known to exist, two of them at the Smithsonian Institution, making the note sold in 2013 the only one in private hands. It even had a repaired tear, but at this level of rarity, scarcity matters more than condition.
4. 1882 $500 Gold Certificate, $1.41 million
Sold by Heritage on January 10, 2014. Before it appeared on the market, the only known example of this catalog number was held in the Federal Reserve collection.
There is no separate story behind this particular note. Its value comes from the fact that it turned out to be the second known example, after the one and only specimen unavailable to collectors.
5. 1878 $5,000 Legal Tender Note, Chinese Specimen, $805,000
This is not a note that circulated as money but an official specimen. The United States sent such specimens to foreign governments so they could compare them with genuine currency and identify counterfeits.
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This particular specimen was given to the Chinese government, and according to Heritage, it is the only surviving note of this design and the only large-size $5,000 note of any issue available to collectors. Instead of serial numbers, it has stars printed in their place.
A banknote that was supposed to sit in another country’s archives eventually made its way back onto the American market.
6. 1928 $5,000 Federal Reserve Note, $780,000
James Madison is featured on the note. Large denominations ranging from $500 to $10,000 were needed for interbank settlements and major transactions in the era before electronic transfers.
They stopped being printed in 1945 and were officially removed from circulation in 1969. The Federal Reserve still removes and destroys every one of these notes that comes into its possession, so their numbers continue to decline.
At the time of the 2024 sale, PMG had graded 22 Series 1928 notes across all Federal Reserve districts, and this example was the finest known by condition.
7. 1878 $100 Silver Certificate, $540,000
In 1878, the Bland-Allison Act required the Treasury to purchase silver and mint it into dollars. The heavy silver coins proved inconvenient, so paper certificates were introduced instead. They could be exchanged for silver.
Four examples of this variety are known, two of them held by government institutions, the Smithsonian Institution and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The one sold in 2019 was the finest of the four, despite having a restored corner.
8. 1928 $10,000 Federal Reserve Note, $504,000
The note features Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Treasury secretary and the man who launched the United States’ federal paper currency system. Chase dreamed of becoming president, and in 1862 he put his own portrait on the one-dollar bill so that his face would become familiar across the country.
He never became president, but he later became Chief Justice of the United States. Chase National Bank was also named after him, although he had nothing to do with the bank itself.
Only 10 Series 1928 examples are known across all Federal Reserve districts, two of them in museums and eight in private collections.
9. 1996 $20 “Del Monte,” $396,000
In the summer of 2004, an Ohio college student withdrew cash from an ATM and discovered a bill with a banana sticker stuck to it. He soon listed it on eBay, where it sold for about $10,000.
The news had barely made its way through the collecting community when Heritage sold it in 2006 for $25,300. The “Del Monte Ecuador” sticker is partially covered by the Treasury seal and serial number, meaning it became attached to the note somewhere between the stages of printing.
Many believe that a factory employee at the Fort Worth facility deliberately placed the sticker there. The cafeteria is located separately from the currency-printing area. A Heritage auction executive acknowledged that it is unknown whether this was a quality-control test or simply a worker’s prank. In 2021, the note sold for $396,000, setting a record for an error banknote.
10. 1934 $100,000 Gold Certificate, No Market Value
The largest denomination ever issued in the United States, featuring Woodrow Wilson. In 1933, Roosevelt ordered Americans to surrender their gold to the government, and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 transferred all gold held by the Federal Reserve Banks to the Treasury.
In exchange, banks received these certificates, which were used exclusively for transactions within the Federal Reserve System. Private ownership of them is illegal, so they never appear at auction, and surviving examples are held by museums. This is the ultimate case of a banknote that exists but cannot be bought for any amount of money.
