Here's how to tell if your old $2 bills are worth anything (2024)

FAQs

Here's how to tell if your old $2 bills are worth anything? ›

To find the value of your $2 bill, look at the year and seal color. Bills with red, brown and blue seals from 1862 through 1917 can be worth up to $1,000 or more on the U.S. Currency Auctions website, which bases the value on recent and past paper currency auctions.

If your $2 bill dates back to 1886 and has a red seal with a silver certificate, you're in luck. That bill is worth $4,500. A number of other iterations of the $2 bills with a red seal can also fetch well over a $1,000. Bills with brown seals are also very valuable.

Although $2 bills are rare to find, if you own one, there's a chance it has a high value. Based on specific factors, some versions of the currency may be worth up to $5,000, per the US Currency Price Guide. FOX 13 Tampa reported that these bills were discontinued by 1966 but brought back 10 years later.

Serial Number

A unique combination of eleven numbers and letters appears twice on the front of the note. Each note has a unique serial number. The first letter of the serial number corresponds to the series year.

“Oddities that can make currency more valuable include currency that was never circulated, printing mishaps, bills with a serial number consisting of the same digit repeated and high-denomination bills that are no longer printed — $500 and above,” said Todd Stearn, founder and CEO of The Money Manual.

“A serial number '1' for a 1976 $2 bill would be worth $20,000 or more. But [for] a majority of those people holding 1976 $2 bills, they are only worth face value. There are very few that actually exceed face value.” Other high-value serial numbers include what collectors call “solid” or “ladders.”

Serial numbers are eight digits long and are unique to each bill. They are paired with other identifying letters and numbers that identify the series year the bill is from and where it was printed. Serial numbers are found on the front of U.S. currency and are always printed twice.

If the serial number, printed on the left and right sides of the bill's face, starts with the number 1 and was printed in 1976, you could have hit the jackpot — the bill could be worth more than $20,000, per MarketWatch. Other serial numbers that would interest collectors are "solid" or "ladder" serial numbers.

Any $2 bill dating back to 1976 that has been in circulation – and any uncirculated versions since 2003 – are worth only their face value, USCA says. Uncirculated bills between 1976 and 2003 range in estimated value from $2.25 to as much as $500.

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“What we look at is fancy serial numbers,” Johnston said. “A serial number '1′ for a 1976 $2 bill would be worth $20,000 or more. But for a majority of those people holding 1976 $2 bills, they are only worth face value. There are very few that actually exceed face value.”

How much is a $2 bill with a green seal worth? ›

A newer bill with a green one is likely worth face value. With a red seal, the value generally starts to go up. Age is also a huge factor. If you're looking for a high dollar $2 bill, it would be pre-1900, and it would have to be in a very high condition graded condition," said Pinto.

The letter K in that position indicates that the bill originated at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, TX. (

Notesnap is perfect to help you put all your foreign and domestic bills together in one place and give you an idea what they could be worth. Still needs some work but it is the best note tracking app I've seen so far that has just about everything you want in an app that categorized money.

Currency collectors in the United States are willing to pay up to $150,000 for rare $1 bills that feature a particular printing error, according to the Wealthy Nickel. Batches of dollar bills printed in 2014 and 2016 slipped into circulation after a misprint by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing went overlooked.

Extremely Low Serial Number

First and foremost, what made this bill exceptional, was an exceptionally low serial number, specifically 00000007 *. In the world of currency collecting, low serial numbers hold a special allure as they signify bills that were among the first few to be printed.

How Rare Are 2-Dollar Bills? Two-dollar bills are uncommon, but there are still a lot of them. Two-dollar bills are the rarest currently produced money in the United States, but according to the Federal Reserve, about 1.2 billion 2-dollar bills are in current circulation.