Three bills with serial numbers that increase their value to collectors. From top they represent a "double quad," a "seven in a row," and a famous date -- the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Three bills with serial numbers that increase their value to collectors. From top they represent a "double quad," a "seven in a row," and a famous date -- the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Your money may be worth more money than you think. 
 
 Even a dollar bill could be worth enough to pay some of those monthly bills. 
 
 The key is the eight-digit serial number, and whether it seems ‘fancy’ or special to collectors. 
 
 When the redesigned $100 bill comes out Oct. 8, the one with the serial number 00000001 could be worth $10,000 to $15,000, Dustin Johnston, director of currency for Heritage Auctions in Dallas, told the Boston Globe. 
 
 But, history aside, it's mostly about number patterns. Even $1, $2 and $5 bills can be worth many face value, according to collector Dave Undis of coolserialnumbers.com. 
 
 A check of eBay shows examples, like a $1 bill fetching $86 for having the serial number 67676767, or another selling for $66.66 for having the number 00023000. 
 
 Patterns to look for include solid (every digit the same), such as 11111111; ladder (counting up or down), such as 12345678; low, 00000100 or lower; high, 99999900 or higher; radar (same backwards and forwards), such as 13466431; repeater (second half same as first half), such as 12791279; super repeater (pair of numbers repeated four times), like the first eBay example above; double quad, such as 55553333, seven in a row and seven of a kind. 
 
 Dates can also be collectible, such as 07041776 and 09112001, owned by one collector, the Globe notes. Nonhistoric dates could also be valuable, like 04171982 – if you can find someone with that birthday or anniversary. 
 
 The “For sale” list at Undis’ website asks $4000 for a 2006 $1 bill with 11111111, $750 for a 1935 $1 bill with the number 00000011, and $750 for a 1935 $1 bill with 19999999, to cite some of the pricier examples. Dozens are listed at under $100. 
 
 “The prices on my web site are representative of the current market,” he emailed. 
 
 Higher asking prices can be found on eBay, like $9,999 for a 1928 $50 bill with the serial number 00009999. The seller has already rejected five offers. 
 
 The ceiling is much, much higher. 
 
 Royersford, Pa., dealer Billy Baeder has a $10 bill with the serial number A00000001A that he believes is worth $500,000 because it's a rare 1933 Silver Certificate. 
 
 See: Royersford man has a $10 bill worth $500,000? 
 
 Anyone finding a fancy serial number has a variety of options. 
 
 Besides Cool Serial Numbers, dealers who specialize in such bills include Baeder's USA Rare, Executive Currency, , and Tickle Your Fancy Currency. 
 
 In addition to eBay, Undis says, “currency auction houses are also good, especially for the more valuable notes. My favorites are Heritage Auctions and Lyn Knight Auctions.” 
 
 He also has a “wanted” list of bills he’s looking to buy. 
 
 Kind of gives the ad slogan, "What's in your wallet?" a whole new meaning. 
 
 Follow @petemucha on Twitter. ||||| When the first new hundred-dollar bills are issued to the public on Oct. 8, the new “100” in the lower right-hand corners will shine in iridescent gold—a flashy touch to foil counterfeiters and lend the new notes some style. 
 
 But for a handful of those bills, the real value will be determined by another number: the eight unassuming digits in flat dark ink less than an inch above. Those digits are the serial number, and if the digits are just right, it could make that note worth a lot more than a hundred bucks. 
 
 Currency collectors pay handsomely for what they call “fancy” serial numbers—digits that they perceive as unusual or special. In everyday life, nearly everyone treats those digits as meaningless and forgettable. But to a collector, they transform the bills into coveted specimens, as rare and beautiful as a moon rock or an exotic Amazonian butterfly. 
 
 The fancy serial number is a curious category at the intersection of money policy and obsessive-compulsive disorder. And to look into this world of collectors is to see just how avidly humans seek and appreciate patterns—and how the value we assign to these ornate little slips of paper is even more arbitrary than we might think. 
 
 *** 
 
 The US government has not always used eight digits when numbering bank notes. The serial numbers get stamped onto the bills in order, starting as low as 00000001, and go up one at a time to a maximum of 99999999 (although they don’t always reach that high). One or two capital letters precede the number to designate which Federal Reserve bank is issuing it, and to mark which numerical series, usually starting with A, the note belongs to. Another capital letter follows it. 
 
 The simplest fancy numbers are the early ones: The redesigned $100 note with serial number 00000001 is likely to fetch $10,000 to $15,000, according to Dustin Johnston, director of currency for Heritage Auctions in Dallas. A $20 bill that was first off the press in a 2009 run sold in April for $5,581. A $2 bill numbered 0000001 with a star — the star indicates a replacement for a misprint, but the note does not carry the same serial number as the original — sold in May 2009 for $29,900. 
 
 The print runs don’t always start with 00000001—in the first six months of this year, only 11 “00000001” notes have been printed in any denomination, because the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has decided for technical reasons to start the print runs with a higher number. The low digits are therefore exceptionally rare this year. Notes numbering 00000002 and on up are worth less, but all the way through 00000100 they can sell for hundreds of dollars (with only a small premium for a $100 bill over a $20 note—since for collectors, the numbers that really count are the tiny ones). 
 
 What else qualifies a bill as “fancy” is an unpredictable set of qualities limited only by the imagination of digit-heads. One collector, a Nashville songwriter named Dave Undis, has cataloged fancy notes and presented a taxonomy on a website, coolserialnumbers.com. 
 
 In addition to the “low numbers,” which stop at 100, there are “ladders,” which have numbers in sequence, such as 12345678 or 54321098. These sell for as much as $1,300. A “radar” (selling for $20 to $40) is a palindrome, such as 35299253, and “repeaters” are notes with two blocks of the same four digits, like 41884188. Undis observes subcategories of each of these, such as “super radars” ($75 to $100) that have all internal digits the same, like 46666664. 
 
 Undis says he got started looking for serial numbers about 30 years ago, when he found a note that had nothing but 3’s and 8’s. He is now trying to find the last nine notes in a set of all 254 serial numbers consisting solely of 1’s and 0’s (“binaries”). 
 
 “Solids” are numbers consisting of all one digit, such as 22222222. “Solids are popular with Asian collectors,” Johnston says. “Solid 8’s in particular, because the number 8 means good fortune,” and collectors will pay as much as $3,000 for one to give to friends or relatives as framed presents. “The number 4 sounds like ‘death,’” Johnston says, “but I can’t think of anyone giving solid 4’s to an enemy.” Americans like 77777777’s, and a solid-7 $20 sold in 2009 for $528. 
 
 If you decide to buy stamps at the post office with your 00000001 $100 bill, the government will treat your note just like any other. But early in the note’s life, it receives special treatment indeed. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing says it segregates the bills numbered 00000001 through 00000100 from the first group of each series’ notes, and it delivers those notes specially to the Federal Reserve Bank. A Fed spokesman says those notes are then comingled with others, so that no bank that orders currency is favored with too many low-numbered bills. 
 
 Johnston says that about half the fancy-serial-number notes he sees have been spotted and put up for auction by eagle-eyed bank employees—usually vault workers—and others who work in currency-intensive locations, such as big-box stores and foreign-exchange shops. 
 
 “Often times they’ll get a brick of money and at the end of the brick it’ll tell you what the serial number range is within that brick. So they could easily tell, at least the most keen ones can tell, from the end of the brick what serial numbers are contained within the pack.” He says most banks allow employees to pluck fancy notes from the branch’s stock and replace them with their own normal notes. (Major banks such as Citibank and Bank of America wouldn’t comment on whether they had policies about letting employees pluck notes.) Every year, a few people call in after getting a fancy note from an ATM. 
 
 And then there are notes whose serial numbers are unique in even more obscure ways. Undis is looking for a pi note, with a serial number 31415927. A certain kind of numerically obsessive patriot has collected a 07041776 bill, to honor the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (Expect to pay $500 to $1,000 for this, Johnston says, if it’s a $2 bill, which shows the signing on its reverse.) The same collector also has a 09112001 bill. 
 
 Birthdays and anniversaries send people hunting for special notes with serial numbers to mark particular dates. These serial numbers, of course, look a lot like a random jumble, and are therefore harder to find up for auction, because they’re unlikely to have been plucked from the stacks. If you can find one, they’re a relative bargain, fetching only $50 to $100 over face value. 
 
 But for serious collectors like Dave Undis—he has about a thousand fancy notes—nothing beats the symmetry of a 35555553 or the consistency of a 22222222. Undis studied math in college, and as a numbers man, he has appreciation for the arbitrariness of an obsession with any one set of digits. 
 
 “If you look at a dollar bill, the number can just jump out at you,” Undis says. “You see something like a super radar, and your head says you just gotta have it.” To see fancy serial numbers in the filigreed setting of US currency scratches a particular kind psychological itch and gives a satisfaction that only a certain type of collector can truly understand. For them, money can buy happiness—as long as they don’t spend it. 
 
 Graeme Wood is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. ||||| Billy Baeder, a Royersford currency collector, who co-owns a car-repair shop, holds what could be the most valuable piece of currency printed since 1929: a 1933 Silver Certificate with the serial number A00000001A. 
 
 Billy Baeder, a Royersford currency collector, who co-owns a car-repair shop, holds what could be the most valuable piece of currency printed since 1929: a 1933 Silver Certificate with the serial number A00000001A. 
 
 Billy Baeder has one heck of a $10 bill. 
 
 Looks like something you could get in change at the Acme. 
 
 But it just might be the most valuable piece of U.S. currency printed since 1929, when bills were shrunk to their current size. 
 
 $500,000 might be a reasonable asking price, one auctioneer estimates. 
 
 Not that Baeder, a Royersford dealer/collector and co-owner of a car repair shop, is ready to sell. 
 
 Welcome to the wild world of currency collecting, where a “fancy serial number,” a printing mistake, or even just a star can mean a lot of moolah, especially on a rare or historic kind of bank note. 
 
 Find a bill with a serial number that’s low (starting with 00000001) a “radar” (same backward and forward), a “solid” (every digit the same), a “ladder” (digits count up or down), a “double quad” (like 77773333), or has one of a half-dozen other patterns, and you might have a prize that blows the face value away. 
 
 Your options: Try for a tidy profit on eBay, or consult a dealer, like Baeder’s USA Rare, Executive Currency, Cool Serial Numbers, or Tickle Your Fancy Currency. 
 
 Recently, Baeder, paid $2,000 for a 2006 $1 bill, with the serial number 00000001, that a woman got in change at Walmart. 
 
 In better condition, it might have been worth triple, said Baeder, a 39-year-old married father of three. Thus his advice about handling that crispy new bill: “Don’t fold it!” Check the serial number first. 
 
 Another tip: Know an older relative with a stash of cash? Check it. Last year, a woman called about a $1 bill with solid 7s her mother got in change two decades or so ago. It was gathering dust in a drawer and turned out to be a Silver Certificate with a star, indicating it replaced a flawed original. Baeder paid several thousand dollars. 
 
 Currency collecting is not as popular as coin collecting, “but there’s a ton of people doing it,” Baeder said. About 20 shows are held around the country each year, like the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Expo, held last month in Philadelphia and next month in Baltimore. 
 
 Baeder’s father, William Sr., who died in May, began collecting back in the seventies, after noticing odd bills in all the cash handled at the family business, Willie’s Auto & Truck Repair. It was a fixture for decades on Castor Avenue in the Northeast until Billy and his brother-in-law, Gary Witzel, moved the shop to Royersford in 2010. 
 
 “Blunders, offsets, ink smears ... serial numbers upside-down,” were among the misprints his father began noticing and collecting, Billy Baeder says. 
 
 “He picked up stuff like this all the time because there was so much cash coming in,” said Baeder, who with his brother-in-law, Gary Witzel, moved their shop to Royersford in 2010. “It’s not like today, with all the credit cards.” 
 
 Soon, his dad was going to shows, getting hooked on fancy serial numbers, and buying coveted stuff. Some early purchases, in hindsight, proved to be amazing bargains, because prices didn’t soar until the 1990s and 2000s, Baeder said. 
 
 In 1977, at a show at the Adam’s Mark Hotel, Willie Baeder bought a 1928 $500 bill for $1,500. He sold it for $225,000 in 2003. 
 
 As a child, Billy tagged along, building a coin collection. But his breakthrough contribution happened in the late 1990s, when he suggested they try selling bills on eBay. His father gave him a few to try, including a $100 note with a star. He hoped for $600. It sold for $1,200. 
 
 “He was floored,” Billy recalls. “You gotta be kidding me,” his dad said. 
 
 Billy came up with the name USA Rare at the dining room table in Hatboro, and the website was born. No more having to sell to dealers who’d flip items for much higher prices. 
 
 Now, USA Rare does about $1 million in sales a year, across a huge price range, with listings from a few dollars to tens of thousands. The years span from an 1875 $10 note issued by the Farmers National Bank of Lancaster to the October-released redesigned $100 bill. Baeder already has several new Franklins with fancy serial numbers, including two radars, 41111114 and 09900990. 
 
 Baeder also goes to auctions, representing clients, including a billionaire, he said. 
 
 Today, Baeder’s whole collection, made up of perhaps 1,000 notes gathered over more 30 years, is worth upward of $1.5 million, he said. 
 
 And roughly a third of that is based on just one $10 bill. 
 
 It’s a 1933 $10 Silver Certificate, which bears an unusual inscription, “Payable in silver coin to bearer on demand,” and has a serial number that’s No. 1 and one of a kind: A00000001A. 
 
 “This is an amazing note,” said Lyn Knight of Lyn Knight Auctions, one of the nation’s top players in the fancy serial numbers trade. 
 
 “This is legit ... It's very legit,” stated Michael Abramson of Executive Currency, saying of Baeder, “He and I are the nation's two largest dealers in paper money with fancy serial numbers." 
 
 “That No.1 note would easily be worth about 500,000 and up,” said Matthew Quinn, assistant director of currency for auction house Stack’s Bowers, which has offices in Paris and Hong Kong, as well as a handful of U.S. cities. 
 
 Any 1933 Silver Certificate is valuable, because after the government printed 552,000 of them, it released only about one-third, then soon set about destroying the rest and trying to remove as many as possible from circulation, according to Paper Money magazine. The Treasury was pushing a redesign after legislation authorized notes redeemable for any form of silver, not just “silver coin.” 
 
 By June 1935, only about 15,000 remained, ensuring they’d all be rarities. 
 
 “Find one of the most beat-up ones available ... and that note will still be worth $5,000," said Quinn. 
 
 Some currency printed before the downsizing of 1929 has sold for more than $500,000, but nothing printed since. Stack’s Bowers set the record this year when it sold privately an 1891 $1,000 Silver Certificate for $2.6 million. 
 
 The 1933 No. 1 note’s chief competition is being offered through Abramson for $495,000. It’s a 1966 $100 “Legal Tender” note with the serial number A00000001A and a red seal. “This is the single most coveted piece of small size U. S. paper money,” asserts the Executive Currency listing. 
 
 Abramson likes to say that he has the “king,” while Baeder has the “queen.” 
 
 “Yeah, I have the queen and the queen’s always right,” responds Baeder. 
 
 Ultimately, the matter won't be settled until both notes are sold, but Baeder isn’t selling, partly because this prize catch was landed by his recently departed father. 
 
 “If someone came to me and wanted to give me $500,000 for it, I would not sell it,” Baeder said, adding he’s already turned down an offer of $300,000. 
 
 His father bought it for about the price of compact car about two dozen years ago – from Abramson. 
 
 "It was priced at a level I now regret,” Abramson said. “I sold it to his dad and I would like to get it back, but I can't.”
– We are a couple of weeks away from getting our newly designed $100 bills, and when they arrive on October 8, some will actually be worth $1,000 ... or more. No, the government isn't slipping in an extra zero. But it is including, as always, an eight-digit serial number. And as the Boston Globe explains, currency collectors will pay big if the numbers are "fancy." That's the collectors' term, not the Globe's, for serial numbers that fall in a number of categories: there are "low" (00000001 through 00000100), "ladders" (43210987), "radar' (43788734), "solids" (33333333), and "repeaters" (82118211). Then there are random ones: 31415927 (pi) or 07041776 (read that as 07/04/1776). The low number ones are among the most valuable, with new $100 bills with 00000001 expected to sell for as much as $15,000. (Before the serial number you'll see one or two letters; these indicate which Federal Reserve bank issued it. As such, there can be more than one bill in any denomination with the same serial number in a given year.) So how do you get your hands on one? It helps if you have friends in high and very secure places. Bank employees, especially vault workers, are typically able to swap out a normal bill for a fancy one, says the director of currency of a Dallas auction house, and since bricks of money are marked with the serial number range, they can spot the bills fairly easily. But no one is going to become an instant millionaire: Bills in the 00000001 to 00000100 range are specifically split up. Still, feel free to pull out your wallet and take a look: Philly.com notes that CoolSerialNumbers is looking to buy these bills. (Click for another wild money story.)