Does paper money expire?

[wdrob]

 

What I am wondering is if there is some law or something that made money from a certain date or period no longer redeemable?

 

If I took a silver certificate to the bank would they give me a new dollar for it?

 

 

[jtryka]

In general yes, as there is no expiration on currency issued by the Federal government, so you could bring old Federal Reserve Notes, Gold and Silver Certificates, national bank notes and United States notes to any bank and they would redeem them for new Federal Reserve Notes. The only exceptions is the ability to redeem in gold or silver were defaulted upon by the US government in the 1930s and 1960s respectively.

 

The only exceptions that I can think of are currency notes issued by the Continental Congress and any notes issued by the confederacy or any individual state, but none of those were issue by the Federal government.

[wdrob]

 

The only exceptions is the ability to redeem in gold or silver were defaulted upon by the US government in the 1930s and 1960s respectively.

 

You answered it right there for that was what I was curious about.

 

I know that I was not the first person to ever wonder if it was possible to take a 1 dollar Silver Certificate and redeem it for 1 American Silver Eagle since the value on the silver eagle is one dollar.

 

Thanks for the answer.

[wheat'swheats]

Notes of the Confederacy were declared worthless by the 14 amendment which also freed the slaves. stating that all depts. incurred by any state in rebellion against the United stated shall be null and void. Many notes and bonds were bought by England in the belief that they would be redeemed either by the states of the Old Confederacy or the US Govt. it self. Yet that was not to be. The U.S. is the only country that has never declared its notes worthless. Any note issued by the U.S. can still be used in commerce. Of course you would be a fool to spend some of them

[jtryka]

Yes, June 24, 1968 was the last day you could redeem a silver certificate for silver, but by that time the Treasury was out of silver dollars, so they redeemed them in silver bullion (silver shot) to make the 412 1/2 grains of 0.900 fine silver that was the definition of a silver dollar. After that date silver certificates are only worth face value.

 

Silver eagles have no relationship to silver certificates, a they were only redeemable for silver dollars, like Morgan or Peace dollars which have considerably less than an ounce of silver in them. The $1 face value of silver eagles were just what the Congress decided to use in the authorizing legislation. They could just as easily have used $5 like they do in Canada, or 1.5 euros like the Austrians use. Under the original definitions, an ounce of silver would have been $1.29 and an ounce of gold would have been $20.67.

[CyberspaceVoid]

The U.S. is the only country that has never declared its notes worthless.

 

So close! Canadian notes have never been declared worthless either.

[Nutmeg Coin]

I was reading about the Continental currency the other day and how strongly the government officials felt about the people accepting those notes as money that if Colonists did not accept them they would be seen as traitors to the revolutionary cause. Concurrently the British were dumping large quantities of counterfeits into circulation in the American colonies, destroying public confidence in them. The subsequent hyperinflation is well documented.

 

In most other countries of the world the obsoleting of the currency and replacement with new notes has happened repeatedly. So there is quite a bit of concern every time we redesign our $100 bills which serve as a reserve currency in much of the world.