Which Notes To Have Graded?

Depends on WHY you are grading. If it's for resale then it would be easier to sell so to say. IF it's for a personal collection it's 50/50 and I would use a cut off value of $100 plus for the item.

FWIW, I have bought graded notes where the folks selling it have lost money on the venture. A while back, I bought a graded (67) error note for $20 (including shipping). It would have cost the person around $25 round trip (postage, grading and ebay fees etc). This is just one such example.

Edit -- Look at some of the currency dealers on ebay on what they have graded to get an idea.

New guy here,
Not long ago I bought a 2003 $ 10.00 FRN that was graded CU 63 ?.
Only reason I bought it was because I collect notes by the year and needed that one. Paid $ 12.00 + $ 3.00 shipping = $ 15.00.

There was nothing special about it, just a nice Cu note.
Cant figure out why people do things like this, It's the only graded note I have in my collection and I don't intend to buy or have any of my other notes graded.
The Bill Collector

People do things like that Bill because usually, they do not know what they are doing....sometimes they do it because of some personal reason (birthday note, given to them by someone special, etc. etc.), but mainly because they do it because they read on internet sites and forums about stuff like low print runs, book values, and other such nonsense.

Consider this: how long does a note normally stay in circulation before it is redeemed by the government for destruction? What percentage of those notes are never redeemed, but kept in collector/speculator hands? Now here is the cold hard truth about "star notes".....The truth is that the truth is out about star notes....they are printed in quantities less than normally numbered notes.....People, whether they are collectors or not, are attuned to this fact, and snap them up at any and every possible opportunity as investment items....Now, what do you think that the survivability ratio is between star notes and regular notes?

Out of a run of 640,000 star notes, how many do you think are still in the hands of the collector/speculator? If your answer is less than 95%, you might want to consider chomping down hard on a reality pill....Since the star note craze began in the 1990s, the vast majority of star notes printed have been saved...not so with the regular number notes....Just what is a print run anyway? How many print runs were there for a series? 640,000 is an astronomical number compared to earlier series, where a total of 540,000 regular numbered notes were printed for the earliest $50 Federal Reserve Notes, (and that figure includes all districts combined).

If the owner of a note wishes to keep it because it is special in some way, or just because it is out of the ordinary (such as this $50 note is because the majority of them are already in the collections and vaults of other folks causing them to be difficult to locate in circulation), then it should be kept and cherished....If any of the pictured notes were to come into my hands though, it would leave just as fast.....I see no value beyond face in any of them, and certainly no reason to have holdered at an additional cost.

I do not know how to be honest without being brutally blunt, so if you like your pills sugar coated, then it might be best to ignore what I say.

edited to add;

I know this is not exactly like yours, but here is something interesting....(click on the picture that says "ENDED").

http://cgi.ebay.com/50-2004-FEDERAL...em53e5305bc8

Here is one that you should find even more interesting....There actually were eight unique bidders who subitted bids over face value, so to my surprise, there actually is a market for this sort of thing, and this one is not even graded.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Series-2001-50-...em56415d6be7

Nope, never thought about it much..

You sir and zeewool are very smart men.
The Bill Collector

Well,
I may not let you operate on me but the way you write I know you understand the collector thing, and the real world of collectors, and in my book you know what your talking about as far as currency collecting goes, that makes you a very smart man. Very much smarter than the guy or collector that had that $ 10. FRN graded that I bought for $ 15.
The Bill Collector

PS:
I'll up load a pix of that $ 10. tomorrow, maybe someone will see something that made it worthwhile to have it graded, It looks nice but to me it's just a nice normal CU 2003 $ 10. FRN.
The Bill Collector