Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - $2 Bills

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why $2 bills are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsifpod

$2 bills known for being money. Famous for being obscure U.S. money. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why $2 bills are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Cipelopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast is all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie. Yes. Yes. Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of $2 bills? I was led to believe when I was a kid that they are super duper rare and worth a lot. So I collected, I think, three of them when I was, yeah, $3.2 bills, which is a little confusing because it's $3.2.00. But yeah, You have them because I think my mom would give them to me when she would find them because they're special. And I thought I was going to be a bajillionaire when I was an adult. Oh, I like hearing stories like this because I have such a specific relationship to them. I kind of messed out on the regular culture, yeah.

I do remember that they had, it was a picture of, I believe, what, them at Seneca or? Yeah, so the front is third president, Thomas Jefferson. And then the back also has Jefferson on it because a lot of people think it's like the signing of a document, but it is the people who drafted the Declaration of Independence presenting it to the Continental Congress. Like a draft, like what do you guys think of the draft? And then we'll finish this up. Right. Continental Congress. That's what it is. As you can tell, I paid attention in history class a lot. And I only for sure knew what the back painting is by researching this episode. So, yeah, it just looks like one of those meetings from the founding.

That's about it for me. When I was a kid, I thought they were going to be super valuable or perhaps already were. I collected a few of them by a few really just like two or three of them. And I just thought that was going to be, that was my golden egg, my golden parachute, my nest egg, my nest parachute. And I thought I was set. So I got to find out where those are. Actually, next time I go back, because, you know, I might have, I'm going to guess that they're not worth that much. I'm going to guess that maybe they're worth $2.10 and 10 cents.

That extra 10 cents is optimistic. And a lot of people don't know these are just continuing to be printed. Oh. It's not that there's only. a certain amount and we're slowly using them up as they wear out. The U.S. federal government continues to make $2 bills. And also programming notes. So this episode will completely cover the topic of U.S. $2 bills. And then the last few takeaways will be about the $2 bills and coins of other countries that have like a currency called a dollar. So not the euro or whatever, but that kind of

thing. So we'll get international. I know not everyone is in the United States. We're going to try to be global too. And if you are in the United States, just zone out for the rest of the episode, because it's other countries, and you don't need to know about that. Yeah, maybe you can put on American football or grill something, fire a firearm, you know, whatever we do, yeah. Alex, you were about to talk about your own relationship to the $2 bills. I want to hear it. I want to thank the other Nick Gates. I'm in the Discord for suggesting this, And either him or someone else who voted for it, they said that they specifically wanted to pick it. Because in passing, I told a story that my grandma Schmidt would stockpile $2 bills at her job and then give them to us.

And she would even, like, if we came to her job, she would hand us one or she would send us lots and lots of little greeting cards for even of scare holidays. Like I would get like a Groundhog Day card and it has a $2 bill in it or St. Patrick's Day or just like stuff. you know. That's fantastic. And she worked at the VHS rental department of our local library. So also I'd like see my grandma at the library, which is amazing. That's cool. But the rentals cost one dollar. And one patron worked for the either the treasury or the mint or the bureau of printing and engraving or something. So one patron would rent two tapes and pay with a $2 bill multiple times a week. And so she just kind of stockpiled them. And it was like a special grandma Schmidt thing to me. So I, yeah, I loved it.

Was it just because it was kind of fun because it's a $2 bill? Yeah, and I do think it probably fits other people's relationship where it's such a small amount of money that you can have fun with it. Right. If someone gives you a weird $1,000 bill, then you have to kind of decide whether it's worth keeping, you know. But it's $2. It's whatever. It's fine. I don't think it's, I don't think a thousand dollar bills are worth keeping. You can send them to me. And then Katie will do currency exchange. And then, yeah, yeah.

I know the exchange rate of euros to dollars. You can trust me. I remember just having $2 bills because of my grandma, who was wonderful. But I also remember squirreling away other special U.S. currency as a kid, especially having a whole state quarter map. And then, like, I was told a bicentennial quarter matters, so I would keep one of those. and like getting a JFK 50 cent piece, that kind of thing, you know.

I also was interested in coins that were special. I used to have a recurring dream that I would find a special coin worth a lot. And I also like, this is maybe a little bit of a tangent, so I'll keep it short. But first of all, my grandpa did something really cool, which was give us a bunch of sack of juiea dollars in these little velvet bags so he gave us a hundred whole dollars or maybe it was 50 no it was 50 per child so 100 whole dollars between the two of us 50 each in a velvet bag of these coins and it was so magical uh and he actually passed away not too long after that and i could not spend the coins i just kept them oh so yeah uh i don't know what happened to them though i i bet my mom

kept him. She's also sentimental like I am, so she probably has them. But, and then the other thing was that I remember reading in some kids' magazine about someone who made like a miniature carving in like a penny or some kind of coin that like it opened up a secret compartment and you could find this thing. But then he a lot like he accidentally spent the penny. And I spent like so many times in my childhood like scraping at pennies seeing if there was a secret compartment. So I have like a special kind of like fixation with weird or special currency or hidden secrets in the currency.

So I'm excited. And your grandpa, that's like that's so sweet to do. And also I feel like being given a little sack of coins that are a golden color is so cool. It's so good. The trope of money and old times. Yeah. I know the coins from like 2000.

But it's such a cool experience. Because it wasn't just like, I, you know, I'm going to just give you sort of a check or a $50 bill, which would, I mean, like, I'm not going to complain. That would be great. But it was, it was so magical. I felt like a little goblin. And with, I have my coins. I got my sack of coins. Right. I would have to take out like 15 skeletons for them to drop that metal coins, you know? Yeah. I will only spin them if I find someone who has a little sack of jewels. Right. Aw, I love this. Thank you folks for picking this topic. And on every episode, we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called,

I don't know about you, but I want some facts on two. This show's going to be all right, and I will give the facts. you. You don't know these things. So I am telling you, I'm going to give you lots of math and also some fun stats about the dollar to. Dollar two. Good.

And that name was submitted by Johnny Davis. Thank you, Johnny. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them a silly way as possible. Submit your through Discord or sip out of Gmail.com. That's fantastic. It's really good. And the first number is most of why this is a SIF topic at all.

Because especially if you're not in the United States, you might wonder why one denomination of paper money in the U.S. would even be SIF? Aren't they just being spent as money? But the number here is the year 1966. 1960. That is when the U.S. government discontinued production of $2 bills. They said they're not in enough use in daily transactions. And there's a whole later takeaway about why. But that choice accidentally cemented $2 bills as a weird, rare currency that we don't really circulate and we just kind of collect.

Right. I mean, I don't know. I might spend a $2 bill in a special circumstance. But do people really just not like when you get, because that would be interesting if like the circulation slows way down because people just kind of keep them. Yeah, yeah, people tend to keep them. That's another way I was weird. like Grandma Schmidt gave me so many of them consistently, and I was a child who has no money. Like I would try to have at least one of hers on hand, but then I would spend them, you know, like I would have one and then spend the next one, spend the next one, you know.

I mean, it's $2. Yeah. That's a meaningful amount of an action figure, you know? That's true. It's out of here. Yeah. I'm remembering now my little purse that I had. It was a little, like, coin purse.

And. That's cute. It was very weird because it was from Australia. And don't get mad at me because I was a child, but it was made out of kangaroo. It's like kangaroo fur. Cool. Apparently not poached. I don't know.

I was a child. I didn't kill a kangaroo. But in my little kangaroo purse, I had my collection of $2 bills and also some Disney money because they had like Mickey dollars or whatever they were called. Disney dollars. And a few rare. coins in there. And now I'm talking about it and now I realize I got to, I'm going to go find that because maybe, maybe those Disney dollars have accrued because things are so expensive at Disney now. I imagine that maybe one Disney dollar could have inflated to something quite, you know.

Right. It's like forgetting your hard drive with the Bitcoin on it. Right. Man, the purse is more outlandish and amazing than the contents. That's an interesting situation to be in. I feel like $2 bills would have sort of had a resurgence of being spent, if not for this 1966 shutdown, because it made news. People said, oh, they're not going to be more $2 bills. Because since then, inflation has been pretty steep,

and the government's also tried a lot of new $1 coins, that's Sakejuwea coin in the year 2000. So if we'd kept $2 bills around, I feel like that would have gotten handier and handier. But instead, 1996, everyone says, $2 bills are now going to be out of production. Now they're interesting. And then 10 years later, 1976, the government changed its mind at kind of the exact wrong time to make these circulate.

In 1976, the U.S. government revives printing the $2 bill, does a big redesign of how it looks. And the rationale was patriotism to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial in 1976. And so that meant that there was a new kind of $2 bill on the streets while the government was also putting out special quarters and other special bicentennial stuff. So between that new bill and the previous disappearance of the bill, people thought this was not a the $2 bill is back thing. they thought the $2 bill is like a brief collector's item for the bicentennial. Right. Super don't spend it.

Grab it, keep it. And apparently we've just kind of stayed in that mindset for another 50 years. But I don't see a lot of them. Is that just because people hoard them or are they genuinely not printed as much as other currency? It's both. Yeah. We're printing new ones and we're not printing huge amounts of them either. Right.

And people just scoop those up. Yeah. like we were born long after the bicentennial and even as a child I was told bicentennial quarters or collectors items like if you see one you should keep it which is silly about a quarter like they just made a whole bunch of them they don't look that special so so two dollar bills kind of have that vibe too but because we're past the bicentennial now people don't remember that being the reason what was going on during that bicentennial was that a pretty big overall celebration massive like if if you're around this

year much bigger than the 250th celebration was. And oddly at the 200th anniversary, we were reeling from a terrible president, but people were of a mindset of like, let's heal from Richard Nixon being terrible. Right, right. Or Nixon did nothing wrong and I'm going to be as patriotic as possible was the other mindset. But either way, people were like, it's their 200th anniversary, we're going to have a good party no matter what. And so it was huge, apparently. I mean, I thought the America 250 was pretty great because I saw videos of at least 10 people milling about a large lawn. And, you know, there was a Ferris wheel and at least one person was on that. So it was bumping. It was hopping. It was hopping. Absolutely. And then the other reason people

got excited about these $2 bills is to this day, the 1976 Redis, might have the nicest back of a U.S. paper money. Like most of the bill designs have a pretty boring engraving of a building on the back. Yeah, who cares? And apparently the $2 bill before this retirement was the same way. Like the very earliest ones just had a bunch of number twos and squiggles on them. When it was retired in 1966, it had Thomas Jefferson's plantation house Monticello on it. I like just a bunch of twos on it, two, two, two, two, two, two.

too. I think I'm looking at that. Yeah. Yeah, like, I like this one. It's just like, in case you forgot this was $2, here's a bunch of twos. Yeah, we'll link the picture. The original $2 bill, it just had a lot of twos on at many squiggles and then some language saying it's legal tender. There was no picture, you know? It's just like abstract. Two, two, two, two, two, two. So yeah, so now the $2 bill is one of the only ones where the back is a lavish painting of people. And it's based on a famous history painting. It was by artist John Trumbull, simply called Declaration of Independence, painted in 1818. And it was a history painting depicting what had happened a few decades earlier,

the Continental Congress going over a draft of the Declaration. Yeah, you probably know it. It's a bunch of guys that we know, like Jefferson. Benjamin Franklin. Yeah. Probably John Adams is there. And they're all standing around, a bunch of other men sitting around, and they've got a bunch of papers on a desk.

And is that George Washington? I don't think so because he was in the field fighting. Yeah, that's some other guy. He's wearing the George Washington hair, but his nose is different. I don't know who that is. There's a bunch of Easter eggs and opposite of Easter eggs. with this picture on the money too. Because for one thing,

the painter John Trumbull, who we'll talk about in the bonus show, he was very weird. But he tried to paint as many of the faces of founders as he possibly could. And he accidentally painted one of them whose name and face is confusing. When he painted the founder, Robert Morris,

a lot of people mistake it for another guy named John Hanson. John Hanson is not famous, but he was the presiding leader. of the government under the Articles of Confederation. He's like vaguely fake factoid-wise the first president of the U.S., even though he was the first Articles of Confederation legislature presider. It's not the same. And then on top of that, not only have people mistaken the Robert Morris picture for this guy,

John Hanson, but then later in history, a group of partly people who were already there and partly African Americans who emigrated, they founded a country. in West Africa called Liberia. And one of the first leaders of Liberia was a former enslaved person named John Hansen. So, like, there's been a really weird internet wrap around myth claiming that the first U.S. president was a black guy named John Hansen. But that's, like, two or three myths stacked on top of each other.

Right. And then the myth claims, and he's on the $2 bill, but that's actually a different white guy named Robert Morris. I see. Okay. None of it's real. Right. These are quite detailed faces. Are all of them based on real people or did he make some guys up? Yeah, they're all based on real people and he also tried to leave off a few real signers of the declaration if he just couldn't get a good likeness.

The other opposite of an Easter egg is that when this painting got turned into the back of money, they left off a few faces and one of the faces sort of became famous later. The number is six signers. When the mint cropped this painting to be on money, they cropped six people off of it. Four guys on the far left, two guys on the far right. And at the time in 1976, they had no idea people would care about a signer named Josiah Bartlett. Oh, yeah. I care deeply about Josiah. I've been justice for Josiahing for quite a while now.

Yeah, so he died in relative obscurity in 1795. He was a country doctor who went on to become governor of a new U.S. state of New Hampshire. And so in 1976, they said, we can just crop him out of the edge of the money version of the painting. But then just about 20 years later, Aaron Sorkin starts developing a TV show called The West Wing. And on the West Wing, the fictional president played by Martin Sheen is named Josiah Bartlett and is like, like, canonically a descendant of Josiah Bartlett who was in the painting and in history. So that's like an opposite of an Easter egg you can look for if you get a $2 bill. You can look up Trumbull's painting and see that they cut out the real person who's a fictional ancestor of Jed Bartlett.

Now, did they invent the pairs, the Bartlett pairs? No. Oh. Coincidence, yeah. All right. Well, I'm kind of done with hashtag justice for Bartlett. I thought they were the pairs guys. No, it's just sort of a funny thing.

Damn. Yeah. There's just other guys. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Apparently there's an Enoch Bartlett who is involved with the pair. Enoch Bartlett is a name for sure.

So, okay, we got the painting on the $2 bill. And people like that. Yeah. Yeah, people said, like, this is such a lavish and pretty piece of paper money. It must be a collector's item. I'm not going to spend it. And that really finalized and cemented the end of this is everyday money. It's probably going to be a collector's item for the rest of time unless things change a lot.

But they're still printing it. Yeah, and they're still printing it. They only stopped from 1966 to 1976. Right. And the other thing is they changed the back a lot, but the first. front has only changed in one major way. The very first time we had $2 bills, Thomas Jefferson was not on the front. The guy on the front was Alexander Hamilton.

Ah, who's that? From the musical. Oh, the guy from the musical. Okay, now I get it. Yeah. Yeah, the number here's 1862. 1862 is the first year when the U.S. printed on a $2 bills. apparently the only $2

denomination of something from the government before that was an IOU-type note in the American Revolution. They were, quote, bills of credit for the defense of America was what was printed on slips of paper by the Continental Congress

in an amount of $2, along with other amounts. And if folks have heard the past siff about dollar signs, we talk about, yes, the U.S. started making money when it became a country, but most people spent Spanish silver as a major currency until the mid-1800s. So like the 1862 is the real start of any U.S. $2 bills.

Right. So did it start pretty much as soon as we started printing actual federal currency? Sort of. So we'll talk soon about how Abraham Lincoln's government really started paper money for the U.S. in a modern type way. because if folks have heard the recent SIF about pressed pennies, there's also a pass-siff bonus about Andrew Jackson trying to like decentralize paper money. Yeah. Basically early 1800s U.S. money was a total mess and a lot of it was printed by individual local banks.

So if any of them made a $2 bill that exists, but the real start is 1862. And as with Hamilton on the front, we didn't switch it to Thomas Jefferson until 1869. How did Hamilton get canceled? It's kind of the opposite, but Hamilton apparently wasn't on the $10 bill until the year 1929. Today, Alexander Hamilton is on the 10. I forgot we had a $10 bill. Yeah, it's in use. I feel like the 50 is sort of less in use.

The 50 is like sort of obscure even though it's totally normal money. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah, no, that's right. Because I kind of skip from five to 20s. But yeah, we do got, we got tints. In real life, we basically only use one, five, 20, and then sometimes your bank gives you hundreds,

and you've got to break it somewhere. Look, I'm so stinking rich off this podcast money. I don't even blink unless it's a five-hundo. That's all I use, buddy, buddy boy. Yeah. You have it in your kangaroo pouch and your kangaroo, skin suit in your kangaroo studded car. See my vest.

See my vest. 100% gorilla chest. Right. Yeah. And oddly, it's been the same Jefferson portrait the entire time. Way back in 1869, they adapted a painting of Jefferson by artist Gilbert Stewart to be the art on the $2 bill. And it really has not changed.

So it's been Jefferson the same way since 1869, which is shocking to me. Yeah. It's an interesting portrait of him because he looks a little bored to me. Yeah. And Stewart also did the portrait of George Washington on the one dollar bill. It's kind of also a bored flat. He probably wasn't fun to be around, you know? Yeah, they look severe.

They look sort of, you know. These founders aren't playing around. Yeah, and speaking of not playing around, there is one other major reason the $2 bill initially had Alexander Hamilton. And in that timeline we said the reason is takeaway number one, the union government created $2 bills to help win the U.S. Civil War. Ah, they shot it at slave owners out of a dollar cannon. Or they put them in one of those, remember, like if you sold it. enough wrapping paper, they'd stick in one of those wind tunnels with a bunch of dollars that you could grab.

You know what I'm talking about, though, right? I just realized. Yeah, my school did that. I was never in it. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I was certainly never in it. You think I sold enough wrapping paper to get in there? No.

Heaven's no. I wasn't no wrapping paper Wally or, you know, wrapping paper Rachel. I, so you could use, you could put one of those with a bunch of $2 bills and then a greedy slave owner comes up and it's like, ooh, a wind tunnel of $2 bills and then you slam the door shut and you suck out all the air. Yeah, so the start date of 1862 for this $2 denomination of paper money, it's because it was the middle of the civil war. and Lincoln's union government partly invented it to pay foot soldiers.

Like they could print half as much money if they had twos instead of ones. And on the foot soldier pay scale, it made a lot of sense. And then the reason Jefferson wasn't on it is that in 1862, the union was fighting the Confederacy. Jefferson has always been a horrendous Virginia slave owner. So they weren't going to center a slave owner on new money. They only put him on it in 1869 after the vibe was now we have reincorporated the South, even though they kind of failed to, you know. Man, that woke era of ending slavery. Right.

Bunch a woke log cabin Lincolns. Yeah, his version of Republicans, a lot of them got called radical. for trying to achieve equal rights and prevent Jim Crow, you know, radical to Americans, yeah. Sure, yeah. I mean, preventing Jim Crow, what are we a bunch of communists, socialists? And yeah, there's lots of key sources here. There's a great feature for the Cedar Rapids Gazette newspaper by Diane Fanon-Lankton, feature for Ben Lavendoski for the American New Mismatic Associations magazine,

and then digital resources from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Smithsonian, Old Miss University, and the American Battlefield Trust. Because this is big Civil War stuff. If people don't know, the union government basically invented money as it is now in the United States, in particular printing vast amounts of paper money and saying, this just has value regardless of how much precious metal is around. We didn't get off of precious metal for many more decades, But that was the beginning of like green paper money that is mostly just the government saying this is worth something.

Right, meaning that it's not symbolic of a certain amount of precious metal. Yeah. And like at the time, a lot of it still did connect to metal. But the union just needed to print so much money in order to make transactions happen more easily. Because the union had more people and factories and economic power. just an amount of currency was needed to leverage all that. Right. Like fight the war against the Confederacy. And what did the Confederacy do for money at this time? Yeah, they would either pass around United States money from before or people in the Confederacy

were asked to trust new Confederacy money. And one reason we know the $2 denomination was valuable is that the Confederacy also quickly printed $2 Confederate bills. Right. Which, like, Ole Miss has an upload of a scan of one of them. I find it to be very confederacy because it's crud. Like, it's not even money. It has written on it that it's an IOU version of a $2 bill.

The face on it was Judah Benjamin, who was the Confederate Secretary of State. The text on it says that, quote, two years after the ratification of a treaty of peace between the Confederate Secretary of States and the United States of America, the Confederate States of America will pay $2 to bearer, end quote. Why does it look like a lady's butchering an eagle on this? I didn't notice that part. I don't know. Because it looks like she's, are these two ladies? I'm not sure, but there's an eagle and one of the ladies got like what looks like an eagle carving knife. Yeah, and it's not even the level of money that the union's printing, right? It's just this will be money if we win the war and you give us a couple years to sort our business out. Like, come on. Trust us, bro. We're totally, we're doing great.

And yeah, and printing costs aren't the only thing. Like the union especially just needed to pay its soldiers. And it's hard to calculate exactly what a U.S. dollar was working. in the 1860s, those random online calculators say it was worth more than $33 today, $1 in the past, $33 today. The more important thing we have is we know how many dollars Union Army soldiers were paid. The lowest rank of private the salary was $13 per month. So a $2 bill was money. You'd be paid less than a dollar a workday. So a $2 bill is meaningful. That's money, yeah.

And it was just easier all around to have twos in addition to ones for you're paying people. A lot of the bills, like the money bills, that's certainly not what you call them, but you know, the money bills, not just the $2 bill, but also the $5 note bank note of the South portrays them like crippling the eagle. and that was supposed to represent them defeating the North. Yeah, it looks like they're attacking symbols of the North on the money. Like, it's such a revolutionary government. I guess if your values are like keeping human beings as slaves, when you see someone like stomping on an eagle that doesn't like make you think, like, are we the baddies?

Yeah, it's not great. Here we are like stomping on this beautiful bird. Are we coming off as jerks here? Yeah, I'm seeing another example of the bill where the promises that six months after the treaty it will be money. So even as they printed their money, it was all IOUs with also a shifting deadline. It's such a obviously propped up, faky, poorly run government. Like everything was about the Confederacy. It makes me in one sense like that Thomas Jefferson is on the $2 bill today.

Because, of course, he's a horrible slave owner. But now I view them putting Jefferson on the two as part of completing crushing the Confederacy. They didn't solve the white supremacy that runs through a lot of American history. But they had Hamilton on it at first because he was from the Caribbean and mostly made his life in New York and in the North. of what became the U.S. So, like, they could put Jefferson on it once. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were, like, truly embarrassed and defeated. Sure.

I like that part. I guess so. I mean, I do think they really bungled reconstruction, but that's symbols on money. Tell you a lot. And also what money can represent culturally, like, each denomination. And that gets us into our other takeaway about this U.S. bill, which is takeaway number two. The Jefferson faced $2.2. quickly became associated with vice and crime in the United States

and eventually became a good luck charm in Ecuador. Huh. I mean, okay, so was this like fun crime, like gambling and booze during prohibition? Or was this like bad crime? Oh, it, gambling not necessarily during prohibition and later sex work, like paying prostitutes. I waited too deep into this conversation declaring that some crime is good and some crime is bad. I regret it. I'm going to step way back over here now and sit in my little naughty corner for having tried to do that.

And the other crime is bribing voters. It also became associated with that. Okay, but that's fun. That's funny, though. I like that one. And yeah, using the key sources. from before and then also reporting by writer John Denahey, who lived in Ecuador in recent times. Because, yeah, this is, along with what we talked about before of the bicentennial accident,

where it got turned into a collector's item, the $2 bill really declined in usage in the United States because of how people specifically used it post-Civil War. You know, money inflated, so $2 dipped from being more than a day's pay to being a less significant amount of money. And apparently by the late 1800s, horse racing tracks were setting up an entire betting window in the set of windows where you could place bets on the horses. There was an entire betting window for $2 bets because the denomination was around and that was an amount of money that was like a lot to risk and you're not going to lose your house. So they really tried to emphasize that. When you say betting window, you mean a physical window you go up to.

Yeah. And it says, place your two bits here for the forest gently size the horse or whatever they named horses. Yeah, and actually two bits did not mean $2.00 back in the day. Oh, what? Yes. Huh? Alex. I do likely I do.

What does that mean? Is it two pennies then? Apparently it was a quarter. No. And it also meant other things and other times. God. Dang it. Gosh, darded.

I was about to make a little bit. and swear because I'm so mad about that. I'm hopping mad. It means a quarter? Two bits means a quarter? Two bits meant, this is another like Spanish silver dollar thing. Oh.

They would divide it in eight. So two out of eight is a quarter. Yeah. So pieces of eight. Is that? Yeah. Oh. That's Spanish silver.

Oh, okay. Now I'm starting to understand. Now that we've got a little bit of the pirate lingo in there. feel a little better about it. Right. Right. It feels like pirate stuff, but it was also major U.S. money for almost a century. Yeah.

So. Okay. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. Okay. So you had a whole betting window for $2 bills. Yeah. And what I mean,

was it just because that was like a convenient amount to bet? Yes. Yeah. It's sort of like the thing where $1 bills get associated with vending machines. in modern times. It was just a handy common denomination that a kind of business found a specific role for. Or like the $5 scratchoffs? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, totally. That too. Yeah. And that was sort of one of the first somewhat illicit uses of a $2 bill. Like horse race gambling was legal, but people who looked down on gambling didn't like all of it. And then Sarah just say, oh, $2 is a horse race bet amount.

I see, I see, okay, yeah. And then the other illegal use was in the late 1800s a lot of politics in the U.S., there would be what were called machines in big cities. It would be sort of an organized group of politicians in each party, sort of manipulating the neighborhood and running things their specific way to get their specific people elected. And by the late 1800s, they were paying people $2 for their vote in a lot of cities. And there's a convenient $2 bill for bribing them. I mean, that was back then though. Now nobody, like, certainly not like the president

wouldn't get on television and say like, I'll give you $5,000 if you vote for me. Right. Yeah, what would that bill even be? He'd probably put himself on it. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, and like that amount is a lot driven

by the denomination existing. It was just sort of a push and pull between machines and people to find a usual rate for buying a vote. And then because a convenient $2 bill existed, they kind of coalesced around that. Like nobody wanted to negotiate for $2.25 and then you're dealing with coins. You know, it's just like, yeah, two bucks great. Yeah. That's the thing is coins jingle too much for a bribe. Sort of. Yeah, you can slip somebody one bill really easily. Yeah. But if you slip someone on a coin and they drop on the ground and they make a big sound you go damn it and like you try to you know like rolls towards a great now you're now you're chasing after this coin and the police look over

and they're like what's all this then and the police is British for some reason um right it's big mess then a clown in the sewer takes the money and eats you and it's terrible yeah it's bad and then you got oh that clown's got my paper boat And then the horse racing and the vote buying, apparently that just sort of coalesced into also being related to prostitution. Because like regardless of the sex workers' rates, either the worker or the client was probably a person who was involved in gambling or vote buying or like new people involved in it. Just like more and more as the 1800s went on, this became a denomination of illicit stuff. Right. Okay.

And then it's hard to pin down other negative lore about it. Apparently there was a lot of stuff involving the devil. Hmm. Because he's got two horns on his head. Apparently that's a reason, yeah. Seriously? Come on. There's a lot of things that come in twos.

There's two ears. The other bigger one is that throughout history of like speaking English and using slang, people will come up with like a soft replacement for a curse word. and the devil's name itself was sort of considered to be an oath and a strong curse word. So they would say deuce instead of devil. Oh. Like if you've heard somebody say, what the deuce, that's what the devil just softened. I only know of Stewie Griffin saying, what the deuce.

Yeah, he's being one of those guys, but English, basically, yeah. And so because deuce also means two, then the number two and the devil and the number of horns, it all kind of got mixed together. People love like numbers and conspiracy theories about devil stuff I've noticed. Yes, yeah, 666. And yeah, we're really into it. And yeah, we can't pin down exactly when everybody decided $2 bills are truly evil. But there was just a cultural consensus in the U.S. At least by the year 1931 that $2 bills are so unlucky.

there's a superstition that you should tear a corner off of it when you receive it in order to ward off the bad luck. But, okay. But obviously it gets destroyed within a couple of transactions. So like all these bad vibes, crime, vote fraud, it added up to $2 bills declining in usage. And the Treasury thought for many years about stopping printing before they did stop in 1966. There is a lot of mysticism around money. the actual current, the physical thing.

Because I remember there being a lot of stuff. One thing is like after 9-11, I remember. I'm saying you could fold a bill. I don't remember which denomination it is. It's the 20, the $20 bill. And then it would look like the two towers collapsing. It was really just trees. But it was like evidence of some kind of, I guess,

premonition of this happening. I remember there being something about there being like a secret spider hidden in one of the bills. Maybe that's real. I don't know. But there's like a lot of like a lot of, you know, sort of like, ooh, cryptology. Like this bill is secretly something. Totally.

Especially with the one and the pyramid on it and stuff. So yeah, like it really is something people assign magic to. And apparently the big modern example of this with the $2 bill is people in Ecuador in South America. In case folks don't know, the country of Ecuador uses U.S. paper money. They had a currency called the sucre, which was named for Revolutionary Hero, Jose Antonio de Sucre. And then they were racked with so much currency inflation that in the year 2000, they abandoned it and officially adopted U.S. dollars. They still use Ecuadorian coins just because that's simpler, and it was cheaper than printing a bunch of new coins or ordering U.S. coins. But they fully use U.S. paper money.

It's not just common. It's the currency of Ecuador. And then Ecuador gets its money, apparently, in a way similar to, like, local U.S. banks get money from the Federal Reserve. You put it in an order for the amount of currency you need. And then Ecuador's government apparently doesn't really order $2 bills because they think it's just not practical. Right. So there's even less $2 bills in Ecuador than here. And that has led people to, like, really vaunt and venerate $2 bills is super special.

They'll pay up to $8 or $10 of money to get a $2 bill. And according to John Donahey, there's a superstition that if you possess a $2 bill, more money will flow to you. So what you're saying is I can take my $3, $2 bills to Ecuador and make roughly, Yeah, like up to 30 bucks probably, yeah. Cool. Because this guy, Johns Anahe, apparently he brought some back in between his trips between Ecuador and the U.S. and made a little money, yeah. Nice. And he cites examples of people he talks to about it.

One banana vendor told him, quote, I don't care if Ecuador stops using the U.S. dollar. I'm going to hold on to this $2 bill right here. This will bring me more money no matter what currency we use, end quote. Hmm. Like there's, you know, no superstition is universal, but a lot of people in Ecuador just feel that the U.S. $2 bill attracts wealth to you. I see, like just possessing it. Yeah, yeah. Which I love because it's the opposite of it being demonic or part of vice and crime.

Well, unless like the money spirits are going to get you more money through crime. Oh, there we go. You know? Crime spirits. Crime spirits. It's like an Ocean's 11, but they're all ghouls, and I'm dressed cool. Yeah. Oh, that's such a good idea.

That's actually a great idea for... That's a great, like the Monster Mash dudes, but they're doing an Ocean's 11 heist. And instead of like a gymnast, it's just a skeleton because you can fold all your bones up and then he pops out of it. Yes, and I've never seen Ocean's 11, so I don't know what you're talking about. I did say yes, they are. So I'm being supportive. Thank you. Yeah, they put a gymnast in a box that's supposed to have money in it, and then he pops out inside a vault.

Yeah. Oh, okay. So it could be a skeleton, you know. Could be a skeleton. It really is a good idea. It would be a huge hit. It would be a great idea. But folks, that's our takeaways and numbers about U.S. $2 bills.

And then we're going to take a quick break and explore that topic more with the rest of the world's $2.00. bills. All right. I'm excited. We're back and hello rest of the world. Let's get into takeaway number three. Two dollars is the rest of the world's favorite denomination for a largest dollar currency coin. There are several countries that call their currency a dollar, and the U.S. is one of very few that makes two dollars out of paper. It's almost always a coin. Right, right. And in a lot of them, coin has replaced a previous bill that they printed. Well, I know that in the EU, there is a two euro coin, and that's the biggest coin that they got.

Yeah. I love that, too, that just numerically, most world currencies have said two of our main unit, that's the biggest coin. And then after that, it's paper. Like, I think it is the psychology of you've got a bunch of coins in your pocket, and then they all spill out and roll down. to the ancient Roman sewer. And if it's like two, if it's two euros, you're like,

caspita. But, you know, you're still okay. But if it's five whole euros that goes down the sewer, you go, Mamma Mia. And then you just are there trying to get it out of the sewer. And that's not good for society. Right. You're hiring Mario to go down a pipe and get it.

Yeah, you're like, Mario. And this brings us to the idea of calling money a dollar. On the past SIFBot dollar signs, we talk about how, you know, U.S. dollars have only been prominence in the world since after World War I. Before that, the British gold sovereign. And then long before that, Spanish silver, like other countries have been the one with the famous currency in the world. But so for about 100 years now, that's the only amount of time U.S. dollars have been

prominent. So most of the countries that have something called the dollar, they either became a country after the 1920s or they decimalized a British-style currency after the 1920s. So it's a lot of like former British Commonwealth and also some other small countries that are post-imperialism. And there's like Australia where they have the dollar you do. They really are an example. Our other last takeaway here will be about Canada. Canada is the most famous example of a $2 coin probably. They call it the Tuni.

They introduced that in 1996. And it replaced more than a half a century of $2 bills. Starting in the 1930s, Canada had $2 bills. Is that the one with the goose on it or is it a beaver? There's a loon on the $1 coin and a polar bear on the $2 coin. Ah. So it's loonies and tunis. I see.

And then other former British Empire, places have done similar things. Australia introduced a $2 bill in 1966, retired it in 1988. Also, the design had a sheep on it, a marino wolf sheep. So that was nice. New Zealand, similar timeline, they introduced the $2 bill in 1967, retired it in 1991, and added a $2 coin instead. Jamaica started doing $2 bills in 1970, retired it in 2000. Jamaica didn't even do a $2,000. dollar coin. They just moved on from that amount of money. And looking at the other things called dollars in the world, there's even less similarity to the U.S. A lot of countries either never bothered with a $2 amount or only made it a coin. Like Hong Kong had dollars, they made a $2

coin, Bahamas, $2 coin. And then the countries like Taiwan and Namibia, their dollars never had a $2 amount. I see. So it does seem like a lot of countries did adopt the coin version of $2 and that was such a popular move. Why is that so much more convenient? Yeah, it's much cheaper to print and especially with how currency is inflate, because they're worth different amounts than U.S. dollars, but people just seem really comfortable with, like you said, if I lose this coin, it's only $2. Right. Instead of five or ten or more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's mostly mental. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a certain, I think there's just a certain threshold of feeling bad if your money goes down the storm drain. And yeah, I agree.

Like two euros is the threshold. Or sorry, two dollars. Yeah. And so if you want a two dollar bill from another country, you only have a few other options besides the U.S. Apparently Singapore, the Singaporean dollar. There's a two dollar bill note. Fiji, their dollars, they do it. And then Bermuda and Barbados are two of the countries in the Western Hemisphere doing it. It's kind of like the U.S. using our feet and inches and so on. We're weird about this too. I wonder why the U.S. never switched from the paper to a coin. It's mostly people doing this collector mentality as far as I can tell. I remember when the Sackagia coin came out, we all tried to collect one, and we did that before with Susan B. Anthony.

They also tried an Eisenhower dollar coin, but it was apparently huge. It was physically large in a way people didn't like. So that one was weird. What if we made a normal sized coin that looks like crap? Like nobody wants to keep it because it looks so dumb and like garbage. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. Because also the Eisenhower won the back of it, and it's the same for Susan B. Anthony,

it's like an amazing piece of art of an eagle landing on the moon. to celebrate Apollo 11. So that's way too cool. Everybody was like, I got to keep that. That's great. I think what you need is William Henry Harrison. Dying? Dying.

Slowly. I have a sepsis on there. Because I find it wild that Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony both had little or nothing to do with the moon landing, especially Susan B. Anthony. Like, they just put that on the back because it's cool. By the way, we went to the moon. Yeah. So our dollar coins were too awesome also.

It was a big issue. We didn't put Buzz Aldrin on there or anything. It's just like some person and like, by the way, the moon. Yeah. And then Saka Jua is an amazing person and the coin was that pretty color. And so, like, all our dollar coins have been way too appealing. Right. On top of being collector's items.

Yeah. A brown $2. $2 coin with William Henry Harrison dying. It's my proposal. Right. A poop coin, basically. A poop coin. I'm sorry to the memory of William Henry Harrison.

By all accounts, he was a fine guy. Extremely not true. He was a terrible person. Oh, really? Then screw him. I'm glad he's dead. If he hadn't died young, he would be famous for how awful he was, actually. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Awful person. Wait, I, look, I don't really know much about history. What did he do, spill the tea, just real quick. Somehow owning a lot of slaves might be the third worst thing, you know what I mean? Oh. He basically invented running a presidential campaign that's all lies and vibes. Fun.

And he made his entire name killing native people and pushing them off their land. Well, yeah, he's actually one of the worst people of all time, yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, in that case, we should have a coin celebrating him dying. Right. Yeah, and also a lot of the world's $2.00 bills have had Queen Elizabeth on them because that's when they were printed and it was a British Commonwealth or former British territory kind of thing. Right.

So she's kind of the other person of $2 bill history. I see. But the last last takeaway here is takeaway number four. Canadian tunis might be the most advanced coin design in world history. Oh, because of the polar bear. I knew it. Polar bears are cyborgs. That's the only explanation that makes sense.

Have you ever seen one, Alex? Like, they're built for sleekness, for death. I thought you were going to say, have you ever seen one and been a specific thing they're doing? But yes, I've seen one. Yeah. No. Just in general, look at a polar bear and come to me and say, no, there's no way that's a cyborg. My beloved Brookfield Zoo, when I was a tour guide there, they had a baby polar bear.

And so that was the dominant thing I ever showed people. Because, of course, it's amazing. That's very cute. It's really good. They get progressively less cute as they grow and crave human flesh. Yeah. They're really awesome. And yeah, this coin design, you know, Canadians have surely seen it.

But of all the like history of major coins made by a country, Tunis might be the most excitingly built and put together. Well, it's like I know this because I remember my dad had this big collection of foreign currency. And the Canadian ones were really fun because like it's got like a little gold circle in the middle. I like it. Yeah, it's almost like two $1 coins mash together physically and interlocking. And apparently the very first set of them, people could separate them into the two parts. It's a really wild money story. The key sources here are Canada's Mint and also the CBC News.

And also folks on our Discord, Ciflopods had a lot of stories about Tunis when this topic came up. We got some Canadian listeners. We really do. We are slightly more popular per capita in Canada than the United States. Oh, well, in that case, you renounce the United States. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and especially for Canadian people who listen to the show, they might remember the introduction of Tunis. It happened in February of 1996 to replace the Canadian $2 bill.

And it followed a previous few years ago process to replace the Canadian $1 bill with Loonies. And apparently the Tooney, its lifespan is about 20 times longer than the paper currency. And in all countries, these coins just last longer than bills. And the Royal Canadian Mint patented a special bimetallic coin locking mechanism that is used to mint and press this coin. And the way it works is there's an aluminum and bronze core. which has that kind of golden color you described, and then a nickel and steel outer ring.

The outer rings dropped around the inner part, and then the pressure and force when they stamp the design into it also locks the two pieces together. Is it just to be kind of pretty and cool just for the heck of it? Apparently that's a lot of it. Yeah, they wanted it to be amazing looking because it's going to be the most valuable coin in the currency. That's so cool.

And they also made a thinner and lighter by a metallic coin than most other countries had achieved at the time. Like this was an engineering task for, you know, currency production. I like it when effort is put into common things. Like I feel it makes me sad when things are just made to be efficient and there's like no effort put into making it aesthetically interesting. I like with common objects, right? Of course, if you're going to build a statue, you're going to think about making it really pretty. But when it's common currency, it's, I like it. I like when there's thoughtfulness involved. Yeah, me too. And apparently a lot of improving the engineering, because according to the Canadian Mint today, the two pieces can withstand up to 181 kilograms of pressure before they break apart. Apparently, that's about 10 times the pressure of an average human hand. And then also the very first run of tunis, people could pop them apart more easily. Like they would stick them in their freezer at home and then they would contract enough that you could separate the parts. And then according to DC Prox, one of our listeners, like when people started popping them apart, apparently stores would accept each piece as $1.

Oh. Because it's because like, sure, it's like two $1 coins, I guess. I mean, why not, right? Like, I'm trying to figure out how that could be misused, but I don't know. If you just separate the two pieces of a $2 coin and spend them each like $1, you're not counterfeiting or manipulating the money supply, really. No, that's fine. So that's really fun to me, yeah. Man, what if you designed a coin on purpose that you could like pull it apart and how?

have two dollars or stick them together and have one two dollar. Yeah. Am I over-complicating things? It's like making money Legos. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah. Lego money. Yes.

Oh, man, we got to start country. You've laid the groundwork with Katie bucks as a child. Right. Yeah. I also had Mitten's dollars named after our cat. Oh, yeah, that's good. Cap money. Yeah.

Yeah, and then like this coin has become an icon of various events in Canadian history, too, because apparently they design all kinds of special mintings and printings of it. In 1999, they made special tunis honoring the creation of Nunavut's, a new territory of Canada. And then there was a run of them that was a black color to memorialize Queen Elizabeth the second when she died. There are some that have special art that glows in the dark. What? Oh, my God. Yeah.

And then also across the board, people just really like the polar bear art. Yeah. It was made by landscape artist Brent Townsend's. And it has led to some other nicknames. Apparently, listeners stash, they say that their mom used to call the toony a mooney instead of a toony because the polar bear is kind of mooning you with its butt, you know? Aw. A little polar bear butt. Yeah.

And the main toony name is a play on loony because there's a loon on the $1 coin. So that's where it comes from. I see. So they started with the loony nickname and then they added the tuni. Yeah. And like some people pronounce it Twuni as a joke. Why? Apparently there was briefly a nickname that people then reconsidered because it's joking about a mental illness.

But people called them bipolar. I see. Because there's polar bearance worth two, you know. It's a good play on words, but I get it. You don't want to, you know, like, marginalize people. Yeah. But it does also make me think of like a pride coin with the polar bear. Oh, yeah, yeah.

There we go. But that's still the same problem. So it's not really. Am I inventing a false memory or do they have like colorful ones? They do. Yeah. Apparently there's all sorts of special runs of these. There's been a lot of just amazing coin design with this.

And, you know, I have had the experience some other Americans have had where you see paper money in other countries and say, oh, that's pretty. Hmm. And Canada's really doing that with a $2 currency in a way the United States is not. The pretty coins are even more satisfying to me. I'm looking at up. I actually do see there's a lot of really pretty colorful ones. It's so cool. I like pretty coins.

I don't know. I think I'm like birdbrained or something because I look at something pretty and shiny. And bills, like colorful bills are nice. That's neat. But there's something about the coin because it's like got weight and makes little ching, ching sounds. So I really want there to be more coins like this. These are so cool. Yeah, me too.

Yeah. If the $2 bill ever goes away, I want it to be for this kind of reason. we have an amazing coin we can make instead. So Canada, pointing the way forward. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Canada. That's the end of the main show.

Good job, Canada. Thank you. Oh, Canada. Your two dollar coins are so pretty. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. And we kind of did U.S. Takeaways and then the rest of the world.

Takeaway number one, the union government created $2 bills to help win the U.S. Civil War. Takeaway number two, the Jefferson-faced U.S. $2 bill quickly became associated with vice and crime and fraud, and then became a good luck charm in modern Ecuador. Takeaway number three, $2 is the rest of the world's favorite largest. coin in a currency called a dollar. The rare examples of other currencies with a $2 bill are Singapore, Fiji, Bermuda, and Barbados to name most of them. Take my number four, Canadian Tunis might be the most advanced coin design in world history to this point. And then lots of numbers, mainly about how the U.S. $2 bill became an obscure kind of money at all. Also, the previous face that

was on the $2 bill, which was Alexander Hamilton, and then how the modern $2 bill is sort of a celebration of victory over the Confederacy. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said, that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is three strange artists

who painted most of the modern mental pictures of the American Revolution. Visit sifpod.f Fun for that bonus show for a library of almost 26 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fund.org. Key sources this week include a ton of digital resources about the history of the United States and its money. Those are from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, from the Smithsonian, especially its National Museum of African American History and Culture, also from Ole Miss University and from the state government

of Texas, if you want to see the Confederate $2 bill, leaning on the American Battlefield Trust for the salaries of Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers. Then we've got a lot of information about Canadian money from the Royal Canadian Mint, from CBC News, then further information from Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and further world mints making $2 currency. And then a story from writer John Denahey featured on the Public Radio International show titled The World About Ecuador and its modern love of the U.S. $2 bill. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie-Lenape people, and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here, even though they are borderline not featured on United States money, except for stuff like this.

Saka Jua one dollar coin. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding it something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator.

This week's pick is episode 197. That's about the topic of purple, that color purple. And fun fact, there was a very special kind of purple marble that was a stone prized across the entire world, especially in the Byzantine Empire. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend Katie Golden's podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Duran. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for editing this episode.

Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network.

Of artists-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you. So,