mr. money bags

you should look at u.s. paper money on ebay. it is pretty amazing the things that people are buying/selling, and if you are like me you will start to examine every bill that you come in contact with. for instance...if you have a really low serial number (and the bill is in really nice condition) you could sell it for probably double the amount. a $1 bill with a single digit number is probably worth hundreds. there are also star notes, which have a small star before the serial number. these are pretty rare, and are made because there was an error in the printing of the note, and so the bills needed to be reprinted with a star (the bank knows that certain serial numbers are errors and only the starred bills of that number are legitimate). There are also errors, like big ink splots, or things like lincoln's head on a ten dollar bill. pretty interesting.
my current collection is pretty much made up of smaller...affordable bills. I have tried to get one bill of each denomination in every year printed...I probably have about 1% of that goal realized...and will probably never get close, but it is the way I have my small collection organized. i have also made it a habit to bring home paper money from other countries that i visit. which means that i now have paper money from iraq (dinars, haven't been there, got these on ebay because they had a huge protrait of saddam on them), europe (euro), japan (yen), sir lanka (rupees), thailand (baht), costa rica (colones), romania (leu), us and canadian dollars and of course my favorite...disney dollars from my junior high trip (1990).
i think that i have always had some interest in this because my uncle chris would always give my brothers and i silver dollars, or fifty cent pieces. and i have always tried to keep these things. perhaps i also thought that two dollar bills contained some sort of magical quality, as i have kept every one i have ever had...perhaps a bit pathetic, but there you have it.