1985 $100 Bill Real Or Fake?

Thank you for your input. I hope you are correct. I agree it is either real or fake, the story does not decide that, but the story why/how I received it made me have a reason to question the authenticity of the bill. A young man coming into a women's clothing store to buy a $10 gift card, which will not get you much of anything in my store for that price, and paying with a large bill to receive a large amount of change is a bit of a red flag. I was just giving my backstory to why I even posted in the first place. Also, it looks a bit darker and more ink bleeding in person. Not sure if that makes a difference.

While well circulated this note should be real. The little ink stamps on the back are from Money Exchange places in South America. They mark the bills once they have checked to see if it is genuine. There are lots of microprint security features which they check before they mark the bills. You can check if you have the right equipment.

Deposit it at a large(multi state) bank and they will accept it as real. The smaller banks or banks with untrained tellers might question this bill because it is from 1985 and does not have many of the modern security features.

I can't comment on this particular Note, because I am not really a Note collector.
As we all know, the U.S.Dollar is used as a reserve currency.

The most deceiving counterfeits were printed using the same printing techniques as for genuine notes, using the same quality papers, and using state of the art printing presses. That is the main reason why they are so hard to detect. The printing operations were based in the Middle East.

I have even heard the anecdote that overseas U.S. Government agencies were paying some of their debts to selected Middle east 'clients', with counterfeit $100 Bills.

One of the reasons why this design was changed is because counterfeiting was becoming a major problem, not so much in America, but in other parts of the World. In my travellings around the World, I have seen large bundles of $100 notes at international border crossings that are used by truck drivers. The U.S.$100 Note was used to pay for diesel fuel and border crossing charges. In these situations, it is much easier for counterfeit Notes to escape detection, along with the Notes of other countries.

I have no doubt that large numbers of these Notes were 'laundered' in international gambling casinos, by shady high rollers.

This situation lasted for quite some years, and much longer than it should have, because the U.S. Government was only indirectly affected by the cross debts, and payments against them by non U.S. citizens outside America.

The original passer may have simply worried it was fake and decided to get rid of it as quickly as possible.



to the Paper Money Forum!

As I am sure others are as curious as I am, would you please remember us and let us know the final outcome of your experience. You can call it "The case of the Mystery Money"

Interesting! You would think the bankers would spot something like that.

Something seems off about this protocol to me. The bank takes your $100 bill, does not give you any assurance about its authenticity, and mails it away telling you they'll call you back if it's real? And you just have to take them at their word that if they hear back from the secret service in 2 weeks they'll give you the money back?

That's putting a lot of trust both in the bank and in the system. If it were me I would demand a receipt of deposit or I would demand to submit the bill myself, no middle man.