Are All US Gold Certificates Still Legal Tender?

hfjacinto: You said that "... if you show up and demand gold they [the U.S. treasury] will pay you in gold ... ." While this may have been true at one time, this option has not been available to U.S. residents, at least, since the mid 1930s. The U.S. Treasury continued to redeem U.S. dollars for gold in official international transactions after that but even this practice ended in the early 1970s.

Also, as a side note, you mentioned fractional reserve banking. Did you know that since March 2020 the reserve requirement has been lowered to zero percent?

hjacinto: I found it interesting that the gold certificate in the OP seemed to function a little differently than more modern gold certificates such as the series 1928 notes. The 1928 series certificates functioned as ordinary day-to-day currency and included a statement that they were legal tender. In contrast, the 1919 certificate included "... payable ... to the order of ..." and apparently required an indorsement when transferred. I certainly wouldn't consider it to be ordinary currency. You are correct, of course, that $10,000 was a whole lot of money in 1919 and no one would take a $10,000 certificate to the grocery store to buy groceries. I agree with you that they were probably used mostly for large bank transfers but I see no reason that an eccentric millionaire could not have ended up with one in his or her private possession (although that probably never happened). Perhaps if some members of this forum have any pictures of the indorsements on the back of other gold certificates like the one in the OP then maybe we could learn more about the history of their use.

These were not issued for public usage. I actually have found very little information on these under than the fire and how they came to be. Every google search states that they were for interbank transfers.

Now if you had one could you cash it? I guess will never now ;)

All of the 1900 $10,000 gold notes are cancelled. There are other large denomination gold notes that are still legal tender, but not 1900.