The $100,000 Bill: The Rise and Purge of America's Giant Banknotes

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Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas once displayed one hundred $10,000 bills in a thick acrylic case: a million dollars in a stack you could hold in one hand. This episode explains where such notes came from and why they vanished. Large denominations, meaning $500 and up, date to the Revolutionary War. North Carolina authorized a $500 note on May 10, 1780, and Virginia reached $2,000 in 1781. They were a wartime answer to the danger of hauling gold and silver by wagon, and they returned in the War of 1812 and the Civil War, dressed in elaborate engraving meant to project authority.

The peak came after Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102 pulled private gold into government hands. In 1934 the Treasury printed gold certificates up to $100,000, bearing Woodrow Wilson, for settling balances between Federal Reserve banks only. No private citizen could hold one. The public notes carried a mix of famous and forgotten faces, and all of them were doomed. Printing ended on December 27, 1945, and on July 14, 1969 the Federal Reserve discontinued them, citing lack of use while also removing a favorite tool of money launderers and tax evaders.

• The $10,000 bill featured Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Treasury Secretary and the man who introduced the first federal paper currency. James Madison appeared on the $5,000.
• Lesser-known honorees included Union general Joseph Mansfield, Senator Charles Sumner, and Albert Gallatin on the $500, and DeWitt Clinton, George Meade, William Marcy, and Robert Morris on the $1,000.
• A million dollars in $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds, bulk that works as deliberate friction against crime.
• As of May 2009, only 336 known $10,000 bills and 342 $5,000 bills survived. They remain legal tender but are worth far more to collectors than face value.
• Bills introduced in Congress in June 2024 and in 2025 proposed new $500 and $250 notes bearing Donald Trump's portrait.