Money wears out from handling and is sometimes accidentally damaged or destroyed. The average life span of a $1 bill, for example, is about 18 months. The $10 bill has about the same life span. For a $5 bill the average life is 15 months, and for a $20, two years. The $50 and $100 notes don’t circulate as often as the smaller denominations, so they last longer—the $50 bill, about five years, and the $100, eight and a half years. The average life of a coin is 25 years.

I noticed all day that there was this weird clinging in my pocket. Didn’t quite sound like change clinging around, it had a different ring to it. It eventually piqued my curiosity and I pulled out everything in my pocket and it was just change and my car keys.

So I started shaking the change in my hand and I heard it again. It was a quarter, but not just any quarter, a silver quarter. It was the first time I’ve ever seen one so I kept it.

Yeah yeah… not “official” currency, but the bills are wicked sweet. Just the feel of these puppies is far superior to that of our monopoly money.

And backed by shiny silver. Super sweet!

(Yes, I also face all my money in the same direction with the proper rotation, ordered by denomination. Always. Big deal.)

I have to disagree with you about the superiority of the old $20 to the current $20, Mike. Given both feature Andrew Jackson looking like he’s coming off a four-day bender, the difference in design is kind of a question of how the deck chairs are arranged on the Andrea Doria. Either way, Jackson’s visage is still going to do a Stockholm on it.

Challenge: I think Mike readers should design a twenty all web2.0′d-out.

The gauntlet has been thrown! Show us Currency 2.0
Starting with a name: “curr.nc” ?

We dug and shuffled around until discovering a crisp, but oddly colored 20 dollar bill in a box. Thinking nothing of it after determining it was in fact a real twenty; we went to the grocery store and purchased (I remember vividly because the list seems so inane to me now) a box of Fruity Pebbles, cinnamon rolls, and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. Hell, we even came out with lots of change. No sweat!

I would come to find out that his mother spent the remainder of the weekend sobbing after discovering we had spent the last gift her older brother had given her before leaving and consequently not returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam. Not only had we spent a 1968 20 dollar bill, but a treasured keepsake on total rubbish.

To this day, I always look closely at my 20 dollar bills and after reading this story I have renewed hope that the bill we spent is still floating in circulation, since I believe old bills are generally possessed by banks and destroyed by the Dept of Treasury.

To bad the dollar coin has never really “taken” with Americans.

And to Mikey D., yeah, the old money is way better than the new skid marks the mint is producing these days. However, whenever I come into possession of an old bill, I generally end up spending it even though I fathom I’ll hold on to it for its aesthetic and historical value.