In search of ever fuglier money

They're trying to make it look like a euro because it's worth shit right now.

If they would just take the "SPECIMEN" stuff off it, it would actually be worth something...

haha.. yeh i got one of these today.. i was.. confused at the giant magenta 5

on the positive side, it makes me think of Sesame Street.

if you look carefully, you can see the mushroom cloud and giant radioactive bees.

absolutely, actually. counterfeit enough of them and you're set. people don't really check fives, so they'd be easy to pass off pretty much anywhere, and it's less suspicious to buy something with a bunch of fives than with a shitton of ones.

But can't people still counterfeit the old ones?

OK, let me explain about "seignorage." This starts off as a piece of cloth/paper with a little metal and ink thrown in, and at the end of the process -- voila! It's magically worth $5, even though it cost only a few pennies to make.

Manufacturing money is mega-profitable for the US Gov. [Everything but the penny, that is, which costs more than $0.01 to make.] The new $5 bills will apparently work much better in future vending machines, too.

It's nice work if you can get it. Casinos bring out new "collectible" chips all the time for the same reason.