What's The Largest Amount Of Cash You Have Ever Handled?

Not much here, only about $3,500 at one time, although it wasn't mine. I really rarely handle much cash in life at this point (and for record-keeping purposes, I prefer avoiding using cash as much as possible).

Now that is a nice turn of events.

In my hands I had about $10k in 20's at one point. Within the vicinity, I visited the Federal Reserve in Chicago while I was an undergrad as a field trip for my monetary policy class and got to stand next to a million in $20's, $100's and $1's in the Fed's money museum. Our professor also worked for the Fed (she taught the class part time in the evening), so she was able to get us in the basement to tour the area that was closed off to the public after 9/11 which included watching workers sort through the good and bad bills for shredding before recirculating the good ones.

Before going in the basement, we were asked not to wander off the dam tour and not to take any dam pictures or our phones would be confiscated. Nobody asked where they could get some dam bait though. :D

These pictures are kosher since they were taken in the "Money Museum".


In case you're wondering why the "briefcase" looks bent; according to the curator, a group of high school students there on a field trip a couple weeks before me thought they would be cute and see if they could sneak under the briefcase and grab a few bills. However, the security system was a little more sophisticated than they thought (along with the plexiglass encasing the whole stack of money) and triggered the alarm which led to them being kicked out by Fed Reserve Police. I'm sure the display has since been updated since they said they were planning to upgrade it.




This was for an interactive activity on inflation using $1 million in $20 bills.



A display of what $1 million in $1 bills looks like.

I was anticipating a comment from you Cascade :P