JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for September 16, 2015

You deserve it kid. Your IQ’s about the same as the bill’s denomination.

And even more fun, is the looks on a cashier’s face, if they have to count with it or make change, using a $2 bill (after being used to handling different amounts all day)!

Also, there’s no place for it in the register drawer.

When I was a youngster, they were quite common, but my mother would always remind the cashier “That’s a two” when she handed it over. Even then they assumed it was a $1.

There was a news article about some poor soul who almost got arrested for passing “counterfeit” money when he tried to pay for a meal with a $2 bill. Had to call the mall cops, who convinced the clerk to take it. His argument? “Why would anybody go to that much trouble for $2?”

Wow, if it gets as confusing as some of the commenters here say, you Yanks should adopt some very distinct-form-each-other $1 and $2 coins like your sensible northern neighbors up here in the Glorious People’s Paradise of Canadastan. :)

Wonderful comic, Robb! Very funny and very real! It is a shame that the re-introduced $2.00 bill never really caught on. The earlier rendition from the 50s… they were used widely! I think the real reason why the re-introduced bill never was widely used ended up indirectly being because of inflation…. when the re-introduction occurred, the cash registers all had given up the $2 for another bill (probably to hold $50s or some larger denomination that wasn’t commonly in cash registers in the earlier time.

It’s even worse with the $1US coin. It is almost always treated as a quarter ($0.25US coin).

They’re rare, but they do pop up every now and then, I’ve received $2 bills as payment as least a couple times while working the register. The awkward part is that there’s no designated slot in the cash drawer so I have to put it underneath with the $50s and $100s.

Racetracks (USA) used the bill extensively in the mid fifties. Don’t remember why.

Night, Easier to buy my “Two Buck Chuck.” Side note, I went to a convenience store where a friend’s daughter works. She asked if I would change a few as they were messing up her cash drawer.

$2 bills disappeared here in Canada, about 30 years ago. But They have never been mistaken for a $1 for the fact that the Canadian bills have distinctive colors. I remember a friend I made who was visiting from Baltimore who said he liked Canadian money. In his words ‘It sure is purty!’

I’ve had people give me $2 bills as gifts. My sister got one from a friend as a graduation gift. Despite the low denomination we can’t help but think it’s a pretty cool gift.

Do what Canada, dump $1 & $2 bills and pennies. Have coins to replace the bills. $5 is next on block.

For awhile some federal agency worked it so that its vending machines would give Susanbucks as change. Was it the Postal Service selling stamps? Anyhow, ugh.

Saw many $2 silver bills when I was a teller in a bank in the ’60s.

$2 bills are mainly circulated as advertising; race tracks did it to counter laws against gambling. I did it to remind people we had a bookstore in town. It goes back to the Populists in the 1890s. They were based on Jeffersonian principles of graduated government, and all U S money looked alike so one had to read it. Their natural enemy, the bankers and railroads (read private profit utilities today) started the “bad luck” superstition to suppress Jeffersonian ideas. As late as 1990s, I had banks refuse to let me have $2 bills or Kennedy half dollars, even though my bookstore cash register had 12 boxes to handle them. They had no idea of the political basis for this ban – it was just policy.

oldwolf1951I have an ancient Turn und Thaxis silver dreimark with much the same thing – instead of milling, it says “Gott mit uns”. inscribed on the Wehrmacht belt buckles in WW-II, it can be translated either “[may] God be with us” or (more likely) “God is on our side”, which is what most nations claim.

$2 bills are extremely common in Charlottesville, VA – home of Jefferson! One gets them everywhere in change.

$1 coins would have to be just bigger than pennies or dimes to be usable. No one wants to carry heavy coins.

The Presidential dollars were never really intended to be used as money. They were intended as collector pieces.

$2 bills are extremely common in Charlottesville, VA – home of Jefferson! One gets them everywhere in change.

$1 coins would have to be just bigger than pennies or dimes to be usable. No one wants to carry heavy coins.

The Presidential dollars were never really intended to be used as money. They were intended as collector pieces.