Sunday, March 7, 2010

Where's George?

I bought some lettuce at the grocery store the other day and paid for it with a five dollar bill. When the cashier gave me back the change, I noticed that one of the dollars had been written on. Printed neatly in blue ink around the Federal Reserve seal on the front was www.wheresgeorge.com and the words "please track me" had been added in pink ink to the front left border. On the back the website address was repeated again in pink and the phrase "Currency Tracking Study" was in purple on the bottom border. Of course I had to find out what it was all about!

Where's George? is a website that tracks the circulation of American paper money. The United States Currency Tracking Project was started in 1998 by Hank Eskin. Since then, thousands of bills have been registered and tracked.

You don't need to register with the site to enter information about a bill, but if you do, you can come back later and follow the bills you have entered. Finding out where my bill had been was easy. I entered its denomination, series (year), serial number, and my Zip Code. Turns out that since my bill was registered last August, it's traveled from Warrenton MO to Ballwin, where it made a couple of stops before it ended up in my wallet. When I spend the dollar it can continue on it's journey

5 comments:

  1. This is very cool. I had never heard of such a thing.

    I wanted to thank you for stopping by my blog. So nice to meet you! It's interesting and wonderful how we found each other. Something else we have in common is our ages. I'm 48.

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  2. Interesting concept. Kind of like releasing balloons...

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  3. I hardly use cash anymore. Most always the debit card. But I hear cash is king now! I'll need to start carrying some just to do this! Thanks for sharing a new way to have fun with money. Maybe it will go farther in miles than value! (giggles)
    happy monday!

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  4. Kathy M-I seem to be collecting a good handful of people who share the same name as me. Probably not coincidentally, we're all about the same age :-)

    AnotherQ-I didn't think about it that way, but yeah, it's kind of like releasing balloons

    maggie's garden-Although I use plastic whenever possible, I always keep cash in my wallet. It makes me feel more secure!

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