1934 Federal Reserve $5,000 Note Featuring James Madison, PCGS Choice VF35

At $174K, it beat inflation! 5,000 1934 dollars would be equivalent to "only" $124K today. (according to the US Inflation Calculator site.

I saw a $100K note at a coin show once. Had to have been close to 50 years ago. If it did as well as the $5K note, it would be worth about $2.5 million today.

Fascinating example of USA paper note history.

@CCFPress When you say "Just a few survive today" Does that mean there are less than 50 known notes? Less than 100 known notes? Approximately how many notes are known/recorded?

Someone on Reddit states there are "about 350" $5000 notes of all types that are still existent, with "a similar number" of $10,000 notes. Not sure if that's a guess or has a reliable source, as there's no source quoted and all the Google hits I could find just keep repeating that same "about 350" figure.

The thing I find interesting about this note is the condition: it's been folded in quarters. Someone - and possibly more than one person - actually used the thing, in an era when $5000 would have bought you a couple of houses or a whole yard of new cars. So while "was commonly used in transactions between banks" may be generally true, for this specific note it seems at some point it was issued to Joe Public, who folded it up. Which is probably a good thing for collectors today as the ones issued to the public are likely to be the only survivors, with most or all of the bank stocks of these notes being returned to the Fed for destruction long ago.