Brother, Can You Spare a $100,000 Bill?

Curating Department, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

By Kristin Aguilera, Deputy Director, Museum of American Finance
Bloomberg - Echoes Blog

In one of financial history's great ironies, the first $100,000 bill rolled off the presses on Dec. 18, 1934 -- at the very height of the Great Depression.

These bills, issued as gold certificates, were never publicly circulated. They were issued only to Federal Reserve banks against the equivalent amount of gold held by the Treasury. Their purpose was to facilitate banking transactions in a time prior to electronic money transfers...