7-23-24 *INTERVIEW* Two Dollar Bill Documentary Director John Bennardo Talks Film, History

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now, since I was young,I collected stamps, I collected coins,
and anybody who ever collected anything alwaysthought about collecting like at least one two
dollars bill. And I don't knowwhat it is exactly about two dollar bills
that makes them feel so collectible.I guess it's because they feel rare.

(00:20):
A lot of people probably think they'renot even being made anymore. We got
a lot to learn, let's say, about the two dollar bill and joining
us to help us learn about it. John Bernardo is the director of the
two dollars Bill documentary, which youcan find on YouTube, and you can
also find the website two dollar billmovie dot com. And that's the number
two, so the number two dollarbill movie dot com. John, Welcome

(00:43):
to Koway. It's good to haveyou. Thank you, good to be
on. Appreciate you having me.I'm sorry to hear about your brother.
That was kind of a down erthe segment he would be my age if
I can give away my age.Yeah, Well, I'm sorry about that,
but I thought you were gonna Ithought your segue was going to be
to talk about two dollars bills withyour brother if you had any adult Yeah,
I aired yeah, I know thatwould be good. I don't have
that for you, but we'll talkabout other We'll talk about other things.

(01:04):
Move on, Yeah, we'll moveon. So I just have an endless
number of questions, and I imagineyou have an endless number of answers.
But I just want to start witha thing about you, like, why
do you care enough about two dollarbills to make a movie about them?
Great question? You know, I'ma filmmaker. I have my background in
screenwriting and filmmaking, and I hadmade a few short documentaries and I was

(01:26):
always looking for another project and atopic. And like many people, I
had a number of two dollars billsin a drawer and they were fascinating without
knowing much about them. You don'twant to spend them, because you didn't
you don't have them anymore, Butwhat do you do with them? And
I said, maybe I'll make alittle film. And I thought it was
going to be a silly, littlethirty minute film with some history and spending
some at seven to eleven. Andthen when I started researching it and opened

(01:47):
a Kickstarter for it, people wholoved two dollars bills and knew about them
and were involved in the reissue inseventy six just came out of the woodwork,
and man, there was so muchinformation. When I tell people that
I have a movie that's one hundredminutes long about a two dollars bill,
they go, how do you siwone hundred minutes? And my answer is
I had to work hard to cutit down to one hundred minutes. So
if that answers your question, it'ssuch a fascinating topic. There are so

(02:10):
many amazing anecdotes and history and superstitionsand stories and ways that connect people that
I just felt compelled to tell theentire story about this great bill. Wow.
Okay, I already have a lotof listener questions, and I'm going
to intersperse some listener questions with someof my own questions, and so,

(02:31):
okay, first I'll start with alistener question. Are two dollar bills worth
anymore? If you've got a bunchof them in sequential number by the serial
numbers, It depends on their condition. It also depends on that a year,
if you have them they say twentyseventeen on it and they're used and
you have ten of them in arow, probably not. If you have
maybe some nineteen seventy six is ingood condition and have ten sequential serial numbers.

(02:54):
I guarantee you could probably put thoseon eBay and come close to doubling
your money. Maybe ends on findingthe right audience, but really with all
two dollars bills, it depends oncondition and year. So that's a big
part of the equation with all twodollars bills. All right, I'm going
to paraphrase another listener question was wasit always Thomas Jefferson on a two dollar

(03:15):
bill? And have there been differentthings on the back? Yeah, there
have been different things on the back. Again, I want to send people
to probably watch the film in thefirst twenty twenty five minutes you'll get all
of this history. But Washington wason one in eighteen ninety nine. There
was a silver certificate in eighteen ninetysix, for example, which had some
teachers and students on it. There'sbeen a few other presidents and non presidents

(03:39):
on bills, not pronomenal well,actually mostly non presidents back in the eighteen
hundreds, but Thomas Jefferson has prettymuch been the only guy on them since
nineteen eighteen. Gotcha, and what'sbeen on the back? Oh Man?
It's been again. I have aYouTube channel. Yeah, I have a
YouTube channel with tons of videos,including the movie, and one of them
is about all about the back,okay, going into all the details if

(04:01):
anybody goes to it, and I'llshare that information here momentarily, but you
can thirst two eighty something videos onmy channel, and there's all about the
backs that it showcases all of them. Usually the designs were very specific,
lots of cool patterns, which madeit harder to counterfeit. So it wasn't
always an object. It wasn't alwaysthe declaration of the independence on the back
like you see now, but usuallyit was just like the number two or

(04:24):
the letters two, and it wasdone in a very intricate fashion that it
could so that it couldn't be duped. Interesting, is there a particular year
or a particular back of a twodollars bill within the moderns, within the
Jefferson series, like the last onehundred years that is particularly rare, So
if you had one, especially indecent condition, that it'd be worth you

(04:45):
know, not just four dollars,but like some real money. Yeah.
What's important to know about that isthat in nineteen twenty eight, a prior
in nineteen twenty eight, currency waslarger, and so in nineteen twenty eight
they reduced the size of currency tothe size it is today. Point on
all two dollars bills, whether theyhave red treasury seals are green, they
all kind of look like the currentone, and they all have Thomas Jefferson

(05:08):
on it. And there's really onlytwo variations, the one with Monticello Thomas
Jefferson's home in Virginia on the backand the one with the Declaration of Independence
on the back. Prior to that. If you do have one of those
bills, you have a larger sizednote, and by default you probably would
know that it's worth more because it'sa lot older. The nineteen eighteen is
the first one, whether the lastof the large size notes, and has

(05:28):
a beautiful battleship on the back,and that's one of my favorites. But
again because it's larger than the currenttwo dollar bill and doesn't look like the
current two dollar bill, if youhave one, you probably already know that
it's something special because of its uniquenessand how different it is from what we're
used to, and of the onesthat look more or less like the current
two dollar bill, are any ofthose really rare and valuable, like the

(05:49):
nineteen oh nine s VDB penny that'sworth hundreds of dollars. Yeah, I
don't know much about pennies, butI can tell you that with two dollars
bills, the only other two dollarsbills you're gonna find that don't have green
treasury seals and green serial numbers andall the gentlemen. I don't want to
say the signing of the Declaration ofthe Independence on the back because it's actually
not the signing of the I'm goingto segue here for a second. It's

(06:09):
actually the presentation of the Declaration ofthe Independence to the Continental Congress for approval.
So nobody's signing anything on the backof the two dollars bill them presenting
it. People always say, oh, it's signing the decoration dependent, but
I'm going to say that for purposesof this conversation. So all the bills
with green seals and green treasury numbersfrom nineteen seventy six on have the signing

(06:30):
of the Declaration of Independence on theback. Prior to nineteen seventy six,
two dollars bills that are this sizehad red Treasury seals and serial numbers and
Monticello Thomas Surface's home on the back, those red seal ones, those are
all worth more money. So ifyou happen to come across the bill with
a red seal and a red Treasurynumber, it's worth, depending on the
condition, anywhere from ford of maybefifteen dollars. If there's a star in

(06:51):
the serial number, which is awhole other topic, then it escalates in
value because star notes are replacements forbills that had errors. So if you
have a red seal two dollar bill, which is what might be most of
your listeners they have. If theyhave a rare one, that's when you
want to keep and not spend.If you have an older one, it's
going to be a larger size,and you automatically have a collector's item.

(07:13):
If you have a green seal twodollars bill, even if it's from nineteen
seventy six, you really got tohave an error note. Yeah, you've
got to have an error note,a special serial number, or something that's
in such pristine shape that it wouldbe graded highly and would be more worth
more simply because of its pristine nature. We're talking with filmmaker John Bernardo.
Who made the two dollars bill documentarythat you can find on YouTube. If

(07:33):
by the way, folks, ifyou forget any of this, just go
to my blog at Rosskominski dot comand go to Today's Tuesday blodcast and I've
got linked to all of John's stuffto the YouTube video the two dollars Bill
movie website, which is two dollarsbill movie dot com. And that's the
number two. I actually want tofollow up on something you just said.
As part of my stamp collecting,which and I don't really do anymore,

(07:56):
but I drifted into collecting errors,and you know, some of them are
very rare. Some of them aresurprisingly not rare. Right, You can
find an error where a stamp isprinted with a number backwards or a letter
missing from a word, and itmight only be worth ten bucks, and
then there could be some that areworth thousands. I don't have those.

(08:18):
Tell us a little bit about errorbills. Yeah, that's a big industry.
If you go to a numismatic showor a currency coin convention, you're
going to see a lot of these. One of the people in my film
actually spent several minutes showing me abunch of a really valuable errors. One
worth seventy five thousand dollars. Itwas an old two dollar bill with a
one dollar bill back. You're probablynot going to find that in circulation anymore.

(08:43):
You're probably gonna find miniscule errors.There's things where printing errors where maybe
the serial number isn't really where it'ssupposed to be, it's higher, it's
starting to run into the border onthe top. Or there's also something called
a gas pump where one of theeight digits of the serial number looks like
the old gas pumps when the numbersdidn't line up when it was you know,

(09:05):
not digital, and the numbers wererolling, where it looks like one
number is higher than the others.That's called a gas pump. There are
some people that are interested in thatwould pay more for a gas pump bill.
You'll just find other generic errors,double overprint, things that are printed
in the wrong place. Again,I'm thinking of common errors that you might
find. The bigger errors are usuallygonna get caught by the bank or somebody

(09:28):
else, right, But smaller errorsthat you might find are really just misaligned
bills, misaligned serial numbers. Didthey print two dollars bills in three stages.
First they do the face, andthey do the back, and then
they come back and redo the facewith the digits and the serial numbers and
the stars and what have you.So sometimes it's possible that they get misaligned.
And that's really the main thing you'relooking for is misaligned digits. If

(09:50):
you have anything that stands out,like what's called the double overprint, where
it looks like they're printed twice andthere's two bills on the face, that's
gonna be worth thousands of dollars.Wow, it's gonna jump out. You
looked from across the room, you'llbe able to see that. But I'm
stilling to think of what's realistic foryour listeners. Yeah, no, that
makes sense. Yeah, And Iwant to just again re emphasize the listeners.
And this is true of stamps too, that the reason some of these

(10:13):
things are so valuable is not becauseof exactly how rare it is for them
to happen, although it's pretty rare. It's that almost all the time when
it does happen, he gets caughtand they don't get out into the public
in a way that anybody can everget their hands on one. And that's
why they're so unbelievably valuable. Allright, let's switch gears for a second.
This is kind of an interesting onebecause a little bit backwards from the

(10:35):
original question I was going to askyou, there's a listener question in Mexico.
My friend always tips with two dollarsbills. She says that they,
I guess in Mexico think of twodollars bills as good luck. Now,
I thought that some people in theUnited States thought of two dollars bills as
bad luck. What do we needto know? Yeah, once again,
it's all in my film, butI'm happy to share it here. You

(10:56):
can go watch more and find thatsection of the film. But it really
depends on how you came across yourtwo dollar bill on Each person has their
own belief Many of the people Icame across think two dollar bills are good
luck because of how they got it. Their grandfather gave it to them,
they found it somewhere, they putit in their wall. They believe it
gives them good luck. But twodollars bills have a history of being associated
with bad luck for several reasons.Two dollars bills were two dollars is a

(11:22):
standard horse race bet, and soif you lost it's a horse track or
something, you know you're out twobucks. Or if you win a bunch
of money, you come home,your wife knows because you've got fifty two
dollars bills on you, that youare gambling, you get in trouble.
Two dollar bills used to be thestandard bribe from politicians. Two dollar bills
also used to be the price fora woman of the evening to spend her
time with you. So certain thingshad negative connotations, and therefore two dollars

(11:46):
bills were considered bad luck, tothe point where the way to get rid
of the bad luck, and I'mkind of really paraphrasing with the next film
here really quickly pure, but youwould rip a corner off of a two
dollars bill to fend off the badluck. And so if you ever come
across a two dollar bill with atorn corner, it's not an accident.
It's probably because somewhere, if someonealong the line had that bill father it

(12:07):
was bad luck and tried to getrid of the curse by tearing off a
corner. Sometimes you'll find a billwith multiple torn corners. There's a whole
other origin to why you would teara corner off. I can go into
it if you want, try tomake you quick, but that's basically the
gist of it. It isn't goodluck, it isn't bad luck unless you
think it is one or the other. And that's to each his own and
how you came across it, andthen again there's no It's just like saying

(12:28):
that a screwdriver is a good luckor bad luck. It really isn't.
But if you signed bad luck toyour toolkit, then it is bad luck.
Okay. So since since you offeredelaborate a little bit on tearing the
corner off a bill, right,okay? So the thing was if you
put two dollars bills in one dollarbills in a register and then you were
counting your money and you didn't realizethat you were You thought they were all
one, and you had a bunchof twos in there, and you came

(12:50):
up with a ten dollars count.You actually, maybe if there were three
twos in there, your actual countsthirteen dollars, right, because you had
three twos and seven ones. Soyou would end up doing bad accounting because
you're not accounting for the two dollarsbills. You don't see them in the
pile. So what you would dois you would tear the corner off and
let me go back. You're shortchanging yourself. If you count ten bills

(13:11):
ten dollars, that's actually thirteen.So to avoid short changing yourself, you
tear the corners off the two dollarbills. And then when you're flipping through
the corners to count them, andyou come across a bill without a corner,
you know it's a two and youcan set it aside. So it
was a way to fend off shortchanging yourself in an accounting account. But
then of course that gets elaborated.Oh it's bad luck. It's the way

(13:33):
to fend off bad luck, andso it starts getting corners turn off for
all reasons if you think it's badluck. A listener wants to know if
you have heard about a Steve Wozniakprank with two dollars bills And I don't
know what he's talking about, butdo you Yeah, Well, if I
had Steve woznick in the film andI had to take it out because there
was an issue with clearing it,clearing the clip, I actually wrote to

(13:54):
Steve Wozniak, hoping I could gethim in the film if I don't believe
he effor responded. So I founda clip with him on a talk show
talking about how he made a checkbook of two dollars bills and he tears
them off, and that might bewhat your listener's talking about printed his own
soci if he didn't print his owntwo dollars bills, but he printed his
own way of putting two dollars billsin a stack that had an adhesive like

(14:18):
a checkbook, and then he wouldgo out and he would tear a two
dollars bill out of the check book, so to speak, at hand,
and people thought it was fake,And so I think that has something to
do with it. Yeah, allright, it was in the film but
came out. But I am I'maware of it. I'm aware that he's
done a lot with two dollars bills, and that might not be the specific
one, but I am aware oflosniyakt and what he's done with his twoth.
Okay, I'm gonna switch gears withyou, and this is probably the

(14:39):
last one we have we have timefor. So we we've been told for
some time that it costs more thana penny to make a penny. Right
that the metal and the cost ofputting the whole thing together, it costs
more than a penny to make apenny. Now, two dollars bills,

(15:00):
we didn't get into the numbers,but two dollar bills are certainly made in
smaller quantities than one dollar bills.Are two dollar bills made in smaller quantities
than one hundred dollars bills? Ibet they are? Yeh? In fact
two's are The people think two dollarsbills are rare, they're not. They
still make them. In fact,I pulled up the data before I got
on the call. Here they madeover two hundred thousand of them last year.
Right, here's print order. Sothere's going to be two hundred thousand

(15:20):
new ones in circulation if they're notalready. But it is the lowest number
of As far as number of billsout there, there's one point five billion
twos out there. I think thenext denomination is fifties and then ten.
There's actually there's not twice as manytens as twos. People think twos are
rare and tens aren't. For everytwo dollars bill out there, there's less

(15:43):
than two tens, so the busis rare. Yeah, and the fifty
is almost as rare as the two. And there's videos on my channel about
both of those comparisons. Okay,they still make them, they don't make
them as often ones and twenties andhundreds of the three highest bills that are
printed. Okay, So if youthink about the cost to design the two

(16:03):
dollar bill, although you don't haveto redesign it every year, the cost
to make it with the paper andthe ink and the printing, and perhaps,
if you want, we could includethe cost to distribute them to banks.
I am wondering how much it coststo make a two dollar bill.
I doubt it costs two dollars,the way it costs more than a penny
to make a penny. But I'minterested to know how much it costs to

(16:27):
make a two dollar bill, becausesince it's the smallest circulation one, it's
got to cost more per bill thanany other bill. Yeah, you know,
I don't recall the exact cost tomake a dollar of any denomination.
I forget that number. I thinkit's somewhere in the forty to fifty cent
range or less, but don't quoteme on that that's just from memory.

(16:48):
But I will say this, They'vegot the engraving sheets ready. The only
thing they would have to change isif is a new Secretary of the Treasury
or Treasury secretary. I believe theywould have to change those signatures on the
bill, maybe change the year,the series year and whatnot. But they're
ready to go on them. AndI will say this. You know,
I could talk about this for anhour, but be in seventy six when
they put the two dollars bills out, they government really the new ones,

(17:10):
the redesigned ones with the green sealsand the secoration of dependence. The government
wanted people to use more twos.Because you can print the same number of
twos as one, you have twiceas much money. So ideally you would
stop printing one and you would printonly twos. Espectually, nowadays, with
inflation up, you get twice asmuch value for the same print cost.
The government told banks to tell peopleto spend them, they encourage them to

(17:33):
use them. But because it wasthe Vice centennial and they had this beautiful
image on the back, everybody thoughtit was a correctible. Everybody's staffed at
the drawer and that's how it beganthe process of becoming rare. So our
culture has not come around to theidea that two dollars bills are regular currency
that can be spent. And ifthere's one thing I would impart to your
listeners, which I try to doon my channel all the time, is
to use these builds collectors items.Unless you find some of the ones we

(17:57):
discussed earlier, use them, andnot only is more practical, but you
also bond with people. I usethem all the time, and people smile
and they remember me and they shakemy hand, and it's like magic that
happens. And so we should beusing them more. And because of these
misconceptions and because of the beauty ofthe bill and its history, people just

(18:18):
think that they're some crazy, quirkything, and they're not. And if
you watch the film you'll see that. Yeah. I love it, absolutely
love it. And I have thatsame experience. I get two dollar bills
when I can, and I spendthem when I can for exactly the same
reason. What's the easiest way forpeople to find you online or find your
YouTube channel? Well, if yougo to again you said it, and
it's on your site. Two dollarBill movie. The number two dollar billmovie

(18:41):
dot com will link you to severalthings. My YouTube channel is called the
two dollar Bill Documentary and that's spelledout th G two. But if you
go on YouTube and just type dollarsign two and the word bill two dollar
bill, you'll inevitably find a wholebunch of my videos. And then you
obviously can click on the name ofthe channel and click and subscribe and find
the film. The film is calleda two dollars Bill Documentary, all spelled

(19:03):
out. Yeah, it's one hundredminutes, but it's one hundred really good
minutes. People always tell me howsurprised they are. That's the word they
use, is surprise that they couldn'tbelieve there was that much quality information and
anecdotes about this weird piece of currency. And it's been a joy over my
history of making the film and promotingit and talking to people about it.
I get random, But the reasonI'm on your show today is, you

(19:23):
know, is one of your listenersI think contacted you said hero, this
would be a good guest. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Yes, that's exactly right, AndI hope he's listening. But it's just
been great. I mean it's openedup so many social things for me at
enjoyment about this this great bill.Well, thanks so much. John Bernardo,
filmmaker the Two Dollar Bill documentary.You can find it on YouTube.

(19:45):
If you forget any of this,just go to Rosskimminsky dot com and click
on my Tuesday blodcast. It's allthere. Thanks. So what you do,
Mandy has one? Mandy has oneright this second? Are you going
to spend it? Are you?I just keep it in there for funds?
What year is it? What?What you just knew is crisp?
Oh? Okay, so twenty seventeenprobably probably, you know what. I'll
look at the date. I don'tknow. It was just given to me

(20:07):
in change though. Someone handed mea two dollars bill at a Jefers in
the face just right above the wordAmerica at the bottom of the bill below
Thomas Jefferson twenty seventeen. A wouldbe my guest, if it's Crisp all
right? That you know that,I'm going to go find out in just
a minute. Yeah, thanks,John, appreciate it. Thank you so
much for having me. Really appreciateit, all right, take care?

(20:29):
All right? So that was prettycool,