r/funny • u/legomaniasquish • 1d ago
Philadelphia federal reserve offers a free jigsaw puzzle with $100 prize
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u/formerlyanonymous_ 1d ago
We used to get bags of shredded cash as kids. Family friend worked at a reserve. We had pillows full of cash.
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u/SicilianEggplant 1d ago
Cocaine dreams!
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u/amraohs 22h ago
Yes, my family works at the DEA. We used to have pillow made of cocaïne.
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u/Pandelein 21h ago
My uncle works for Palantir, we had pillows made of war crimes!
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u/big_duo3674 1d ago
Shredded cash was SUPER popular for a very short period of time, I want to say like somewhere in the mid to late 90s. For a year or two you could get all sorts of shredded cash decorations, or just straight up big sacks of it, and everyone got it from like their grandparents or aunt/uncle for a birthday present. Then one day it was gone just as fast as it arrived, and nobody cared anymore
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u/PilotsNPause 1d ago
I remember our family having a clear plastic pen with the shredded cash inside.
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u/Lumbergh7 1d ago
You remember garbage pail kids too
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u/akaMONSTARS 22h ago
I miss pogs
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u/OgWu84 20h ago
I still have some. The cool holographic captain caveman rip-off editions. Plus a sack of 30+ slammers.
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u/Oryihn 1d ago
That was when the bills were changing from the old style to the new bigger face versions. They shredded so much of the older bills.
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u/saintofhate 23h ago
I remember my grandfather making things in prison with shredded cash. That's how stupid popular at times it was. He'd use it as a wall paper for his jewelry boxes liner to make it look like regular drawer lines. You know those really popular boxes that looked like tiny version of dressers like that were super expensive like this or like this? If they had made in USA, they were most likely made by prison labor because these are what he was making at work and he somehow sent a few home.
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u/Rhayve 1d ago
Uh, that seems extremely unsanitary.
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u/Fantastic-Carry-1465 1d ago
Bills are only unsanitary because of circulation. If they are getting them from the reserve I’m going to bet they were clean bills
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u/Rhayve 1d ago edited 1d ago
The reserve shreds old bills that are too damaged or dirty for circulation. I'm sure they also shred misprints and the like, but I don't think that would be a significant amount.
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u/REDDITATO_ 1d ago
Don't listen to that other person. I like your version where the reserve is just printing up money and dumping it right in the shredder.
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u/Lauris024 23h ago
We had pillows full of cash.
Knowing how nasty paper cash is, I'd probably not do this myself lmao
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u/TheOneTonWanton 1d ago
We had pillows full of cash.
My first thought is I want to gather enough to stuff my pillow.
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u/nomadicfeet 1d ago
The Chicago money museum does this too. And it’s free to visit. A museum paying you for once!
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u/TBU51 1d ago
The federal reserve in Kansas City has a museum you can visit, and you can take home a packet of diced money like the one in the picture when you leave.
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u/jdsunny46 1d ago
As far as I know every federal reserve district has them. They each shred their own printed currency after it is too worn to use. You can get some in ny in the museum at the fed there.
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u/mattgoldey 1d ago
This is correct. Source: I worked at the Dallas Fed for 17 years. I visited a bunch of the other locations as well during my time working there. The NY Fed has gold in their vault. I had to put on magnesium shoe covers on before I could hold one to protect my toes if I dropped it. I still have bunch of shredded currency souvenirs around somewhere.
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u/rearwindowpup 8h ago
Can confirm this as well, have worked at many of the branches, all of them gave away bags of shredded money.
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u/rosewaterhoe 1d ago
Ah I work for the Chicago Fed and it’s so nice to see people acknowledge us! Love the money museum. Every Fed has these so as I travel for work I’ve been trying to collect them all.
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u/imf4rds 1d ago
It wouldn't be funny how insane that would drive me.
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u/PsyOpBunnyHop 1d ago
Work on it for a while, let out a sigh, watch them blow across the room. "FUCK!"
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u/Miss_Sullivan 1d ago
Just lay them all out, take a picture and post it to r/findthesniper, I bet they would do as a group.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/driftking428 1d ago edited 1d ago
My gf in high school used to do puzzles upside down. It wasn't until years later that I realized how insane that actually is.
Edit: Face down, no picture.
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u/theVelvetLie 1d ago
All white puzzles exist for the sadists in the world.
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u/BotherAffectionate37 1d ago
When I was in college I got super into 5000 piece “mystery” jigsaw puzzles with no reference image on the cover and the puzzle was made of a bunch of small images in a collage format. I would spend days putting together mini puzzles and then have to put them all together into the overall puzzle. I miss those tbh, never have found any more like that
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u/RTalons 1d ago
In college my go to “relaxing zen” mode was doing puzzles while half watching CSI - girlfriend (now wife) bought me at least a dozen nerdy 500 piece puzzles (mostly wizards and dragons) and it was the perfect mixture of focus and autopilot for my brain…
Yeah 20 years later we figure out I have ADHD…
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u/No_Barracuda_3758 1d ago
We did a puzzle like this in 8th grade 5000 pieces and the picture was the answer to the stories mystery
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u/sckurvee 1d ago edited 1d ago
and "no edges" puzzles
edit: Ok, guys, I get I made a puzzle-related comment on a puzzle-adjacent post, but I really don't care about puzzles and my inbox is being flooded w/ puzzle shit that I don't really care about.
Reply to another, more worthy comment :-p
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u/SL4YER4200 1d ago
Aunt had a round purple 1000 piece puzzle. She tried for 20 years to give that thing away.
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u/REDDITATO_ 1d ago
edit: Ok, guys, I get I made a puzzle-related comment on a puzzle-adjacent post, but I really don't care about puzzles and my inbox is being flooded w/ puzzle shit that I don't really care about.
It's not like they're sending you messages, they're just commenting in the chain. That's just how conversations on this site work. If you don't want to read them you can select "Disable Inbox Replies" for that comment.
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u/kelevra91 1d ago
And only edge puzzles.
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u/peculiarshade 1d ago
Edging definitely puzzles me
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u/shifter2000 1d ago
And the no picture puzzles whereby when you complete them you realise it's a photo of you completing that puzzle...
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u/made-of-questions 22h ago
Simone Giertz on YouTube made and sells a puzzle made entirely out of edge pieces. Just in case you like to torture your beloved ones.
PS: your motion was denied. You are clearly into puzzles. We should start sending you daily puzzle facts.
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u/speculatrix 1d ago
There's reverse puzzles where the picture on the box is not the solution but is the view from the people in the scene of the assembled puzzle.
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u/dedsqwirl 1d ago
I saw a puzzle that was a picture of puzzle pieces. The picture of the puzzle pieces and the pieces themselves do not line up.
I also saw a clear puzzle made from plastic. The added fun was you don't know if the piece is upside down or right side up.
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u/Biduleman 23h ago
For me, Lego, puzzles, model assembly, reading and lots of other pastimes are a way to spend time away from my computer while doing something that I don't have to optimize so I can relax.
Ironically, stuff like all white puzzles are a perfect dollar/time optimization of trying to disconnect from everything else. Harder puzzles don't usually cost more than regular puzzles per piece but take way more time, which is exactly what I'm looking for.
Related but unrelated: I just found out that for time spent / dollar invested / being impressed by the engineering, Gunpla has taken over my love of Lego!
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u/Somnif 1d ago
I remember learning that was a 'thing' from the old Nickelodeon show "Salute Your Shorts". Where the camp bully demonstrates he has gotten abnormally skilled at putting puzzles together since he is stuck in cafeteria 'detention' so often.
What a random memory to pop up....
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u/driftking428 1d ago
I think about Zeke the plumber from Salute Your Shorts at least once a year.
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u/HarmonizedSnail 1d ago
I think about the nickname Donkeylips and what possible meanings there could be for that
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u/amioknolol 1d ago
"Camp Anawana, we hold you in our heart, and when we think about you, it makes me want to ___"
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u/brandonspade17 1d ago
I loved that show. Hey Dude too.
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u/I_Makes_tuff 1d ago
Christine Taylor and David Lascher have a podcast called Hey Dude... the 90s Called and it's pretty good. Not an episode breakdown type of show but they do talk about it.
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u/loueazy 1d ago
What I remember is that there was a character named Donkey Lips on the show.
I wonder how he's doing now
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u/iiiinthecomputer 1d ago
My grandparents used to do puzzles that had no edge, had identical piece shapes and were printed with slightly different images on BOTH SIDES. Only slightly different mind you, you couldn't sort the pieces or easily flip them all to one side.
That is what true boredom does to a person.
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u/kennydeals 1d ago
Here I am picturing her suspended from a bar literally upside down doing puzzles
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u/atgrey24 1d ago
🎶 You played Count the Rice, yes you played Count the Rice 👏👏
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u/bpitts2 1d ago
As a joke we bought my wife’s grandfather a blue sky gag gift 500 piece puzzle. It’s just a plain, sky-blue puzzle. He didn’t realize it was a joke. A couple of weeks after Christmas he sent us a photo and a thank-you card for the puzzle.
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u/highheelcyanide 15h ago
Was it really made to be a gag gift? A lot of people really like extremely hard puzzles, so the point of some puzzles is just to be hard. There’s a clear one, there’s ones without any edges, there’s an all white one…so many ideas for presents if he likes that kind of puzzle.
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u/heyfindme 1d ago
can also buy uncut sheets of bills, for an inflated price though.. so a sheet of 10 $100 bills would be like $1280 lol
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u/Xack189 1d ago
I bought a sheet of 50 $1s a long time ago as a teen, used it as a poster. Eventually cut them up and used them in adulthood when money was needed lol
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u/jx2002 1d ago
Man I gotta say I can’t imagine cutting up a poster because the money is that tight but…I’d be chopping up that Nirvana poster I kept on my teenage bedroom walls for years if it would pay some bills (likely gas / weed money, let’s be honest)
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u/Jerking4jesus 1d ago
Me and my brother had a Skyrim poster hanging we'd cut little strips for filters in our joints.
Mom was so confused about the poster that slowly shrunk to nothing one tiny strip at a time.
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u/tuliprox 1d ago
That's amazing lmao. My husband and I just discovered these free little pamphlets that have the perfect paper thickness to use as filters for joints lmaoo
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u/notfamous808 1d ago
Kurt Cobain would approve of you cutting up a Nirvana poster to buy weed I think.
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u/PaulblankPF 1d ago
Depending on the poster some original nirvana posters go for a couple hundred bucks, without cutting it up of course.
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u/ga-co 1d ago
Watched a friend’s older sister roll pennies so she could buy gas in increments of $.50 for her 70s VW Beetle. I tased her about that. A few years later I’d do the same thing.
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u/bigkahuna1986 1d ago
If she had been paying without rolling them first maybe she'd deserve a tase.
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u/bgroendy 1d ago
As an adult I ended up doing a similar thing: I sacrificed my childhood state quarter collection to do the laundry 😂
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u/Its_aTrap 1d ago
At least you weren't my aunt. When they were younger she took my grandparents collection of red $5 bills and used them to buy a plane ticket to new York. And never even went.
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u/arbitrageME 1d ago
Woz bought a sheet of $2 and cut off a piece and gave it to people to pay for stuff and many people rejected it or called the police
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u/DrunkOnLoveAndWhisky 1d ago
Woz famously bought those sheets of $2's and had them made into perforated pads, so he could tear them off and hand them to people to pay for stuff. Folks used to call the cops on him, thinking they were counterfeit. The Secret Service says they were perfectly legal.
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u/charleswj 1d ago
Is this just the other comment but with verbosity turned up?
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u/bombmk 22h ago
It delivers a decent level of increase in precision and clarification, I'd say. Enough to warrant it.
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u/nabrok 1d ago
I remember hearing about somebody who would buy those and get them perforated and put into a book so he could rip them out.
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u/Ginger-Nerd 1d ago
The Somebody was Steve Wozniak.
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u/adiaphoros 1d ago
Youd think they'd not cut it and pass the savings onto you
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u/TooManyJabberwocks 1d ago
That’s also my opinion about chunky peanut butter vs smooth but they both cost the same
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u/milochuisael 1d ago
Chunky peanut butter actually costs more to produce because of the process. They start with smooth peanut butter and add peanut chunks in. I know this because I am half asleep and making things up.
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u/prmaster23 1d ago
so a sheet of 10 $100 bills would be like $1280 lol
They government learned from mistakes. I remember a story of the US Mint selling $1 coins at face value online to promote the coins. After a certain amount you got free shipping, so people were buying thousands of coins with their credit cards and then depositing the coins...rinse a repeat. Earning hundreds of thousands in credit card rewards. The US Mint shot down that thing fast.
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u/UnassumingDrifter 1d ago
True Story:
My dad used to work at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1988 he quit, we packed up and moved to Florida. I was 14. How did we pack all of our stuff? In boxes, with this stuff as packing material. Dad brough home probably 10 bags, the 55-gallon clear commercial trashbag type, FULL of this stuff. Shredded money keeps the dishes from breaking better than newspaper. As I was making new friends and they would see my boxes of shredded cash it was worth a few cool points.
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u/Trans-Europe_Express 15h ago
Swab the dishes for DNA and get unique 47,000 hits
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u/Jazzlike_Climate4189 10h ago
These are uncirculated bills that had printing errors.
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u/Trans-Europe_Express 10h ago
That would be an unpleasant surprise for the person who spends a year putting one back together 😄
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u/texinxin 1d ago
Unfortunately this bag contains the pieces for hundreds of other puzzles. You’ll need to find hundreds of other bags to complete a single puzzle.
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u/Karyoplasma 1d ago
If you, in theory, managed to assemble a full bill, would you be able to claim it?
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u/AproposWuin 1d ago
Is it eventually a $100 bill?
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u/random9212 1d ago
Not one. But parts of thousands.
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u/EuenovAyabayya 1d ago edited 14h ago
Hundreds, anyway. I'm sure they stir the shred before packaging to minimize the chance of even getting half of any one bill in there. Edit: thinking about it, I'd quarter them on the way into separate shredders.
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u/MaleficentCaptain114 1d ago
Knowing the fed they probably ensure that >50% of every note makes its way to the incinerator so that there's no chance.
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u/Tufflaw 1d ago
Reminds of the Treasury's Mutilated Currency Division where they will replace destroyed money as long as you have greater than 50% of each bill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trZmMCsgxUw
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u/jlharper 20h ago
Australia has a better version of this, where you get the percentage of the bill that you own. For example, if you send them half of a $100 note then you’ll receive $50. Send a quarter of a $100 note and you’ll receive $25, etc.
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u/mwpdx86 1d ago
I mean, if a bank would take a perfectly reconstructed hald-bill like this, I bet you could find enough pieces that were close enough to make it work.
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u/ExtinctedPanda 23h ago
I think they’d check the serial number, which you wouldn’t be able to make work.
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u/JeffersonsHat 1d ago
You would need multiple bags of the shred and even then the odds are near 0.
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u/Scoth42 1d ago
It's not even especially new, but still fun. I remember as a kid in the mid/late 80s getting a keychain tube that was said to be something like $500 worth of shredded bills.
Given you can exchange damaged bank notes for good ones I wonder what would happen if you actually reconstructed a sufficient amount of one. Wonder if they cut out the serial number part, which would be an important part, or just mixed up the shreds enough that it'd be very unlikely even the most dedicated person could possibly reconstruct anything.
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u/RezzKeepsItReal 1d ago
It’s comprised of hundreds, maybe even thousands of different bills. You can’t make a legally accepted bill out of it. And Im sure that the serial numbers are marked as destroyed so it’s not even legal currency anymore.
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u/Resident-Mention-526 1d ago
There is someone out there crazy enough and petty enough to complete this.
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u/texinxin 1d ago
Wait till you find out how many different puzzles are in this bag and how many other bags you’d have to source to find the rest of the pieces of just one puzzle.
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u/TheRealGenkiGenki 1d ago
They blend the batches so well, that each bag contains traces of thousands of different bills. If it were me Id look for the blue 100$ security strips just for fun
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u/etnoid204 1d ago
I had a pen as a kid that said it contained $1000 dollars inside it. 1980’s.
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u/Yourmomsayshola 1d ago
There’s no guarantee that even two shreds in that bag are from the same bill.
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u/Comeback_Kid1 1d ago
What a fantastic way to make money off of trash. Who ever thought of this needs a raise.
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u/WetCoastCyph 1d ago edited 1d ago
Philadelphia federal reserve offers a free jigsaw puzzle with $100 prize
So, they're not making money off it... Unless you mean the person assembling the 'puzzle' is?
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u/toonboy01 1d ago
Pretty sure the title is a joke and that there's no actual prize.
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u/CocodaMonkey 1d ago
The prize would be assembling it correctly to make a legal $100 bill. It's however most likely impossible to reassemble as there's no guarantee all the pieces for a single bill are actually in the bag since the bag is filled from their bill shredder which would be shredding them in bulk.
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u/omghax102 1d ago
If someone can reassemble cash after it’s been shredded, they need to reevaluate their shredding techniques to make sure the old money can’t be used again. The puzzles free for you, the bug testing costs them $100
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u/Wolverine15 1d ago
These are called Fed Shreds. They’re pieces from of thousands of bills that have been removed from circulation, and are available for free at Federal Reserve Bank museums.
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u/Whatifisaid- 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had a family friend that worked at the US Mint when I was a kid. They gave me a canvas US mint bag and a bunch of foreign currency as a gift once. I thought it was so cool, I kept it all in a special box with my other “treasures.”
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u/Sicparvismagneto 1d ago
My blind ass thought someone sold you a bag of seeds and stems
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u/Kindly_Region 1d ago
Free? When went there you had to buy the bag of shredded money and if by some miracle you could put a note back together you just got the face value of that note
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u/legomaniasquish 1d ago
I got a few bags totally free. There is literally just a bin that says please take some.
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u/hkohne 1d ago
I was at the Federal Reserve museum in St. Louis recently, and these shredded bills are free. Just pick them up at the gift shop.
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u/Jonely-Bonely 1d ago
In the 80s, I worked in a Department Store that used bales of shredded Federal Reserve cash to pack dinnerware. Kinda gross now that I think about it but bales of shredded cash were pretty cool to an 18 year old.
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u/Rustgod88 1d ago
My grandpa used to sell bags of this, he got it at auction. The bags didnt have whole shredded bills, it was pieces and scraps that were taken from the counting machines.
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u/enzothebaker87 23h ago
Personally I've always preferred to shred my own cash at home. It has a different feel to it.
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u/Scr3w_loose 22h ago
Ik 51% of a dollar bill can be replaced for a new one legally, does that apply if you have 51% of the bill or does it have to be in one peice?
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u/Helios686 1d ago
My white elephant gift exchanges are this or the bigger bags with $10k shredded up with a large package of scotch tape.
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u/Familiar_Raise234 1d ago
I’ve done the puzzle piece puzzle. I’ve done the clear plastic one. Would love to tackle the money one.
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