Where's George
by Dr. David Currie OK, so it’s addictive... You have all seen “where’s George” messages stamped on paper currency. I’ve run into several of the bills myself, but until last night was able to avoid visiting the Where's George website (The Great American Dollar Bill Locator)… thinking that it was most likely a foolish endeavor at best. Last night I made the mistake of visiting Where's George. The eye-catching website is clean, fun-oriented and simply too easy to navigate. In terms of web usability, Where's George scores a ten out of ten in this surfer’s book. Within minutes, I was a registered Where's George user. Within a few more minutes I had entered the serial number for a dollar bill bearing a Where's George tracing stamp… by the way, the bill was a one dollar bill printed in 2001 and bearing the serial number F13816513E.
While registering the bill, I excitedly told my story about receiving the bill as change while buying breakfast biscuits and coffee at Hardee’s of Piney Flats, Tennessee. Doesn’t sound very exciting, until you find yourself at Where's George reading countless stories about where bills have traveled. The secret here is that the most mundane travel tale of a dollar bill takes on near-romantic proportions when the dollar bill you are reading about is in your hand. “Honey, honey, this bill has been in more restaurants than we have!”
Immediately after registering the bill, I was able to read about places where other people had received the same bill… and even what kind of condition the bill was in as it passed from person to person… I carefully described the folded corners and smudge mark that now appear on the face of the bill. Dollar bill trivia, which meant nothing to me minutes earlier, had suddenly taken on a new and important meaning!
At this point, my wife became irritated with me for spending time at Where's George. Within a few more minutes, however, I found that the bill in my possession, which I received as change at a Hardee’s restaurant in Piney Flats, Tennessee, and brought home to Mendota, Virginia, had also done the rounds in Abingdon and Bristol, Virginia (for those few of you unfamiliar with Bristol, it is home to the world’s fastest half-mile race track and the toughest ticket to get on the NASCAR circuit… why, a famous NASCAR driver might have handled this bill!). Where's George even estimated for us how far the bill had traveled since it was first registered… 6 miles! (actually, the bill has traveled a lot more than that as I drove the bill 25 miles from Piney Flats to Mendota). Suddenly, my wife’s interest in Where's George was piqued. Enter more bills she told me… let’s see if we can find one that has traveled farther than the first. And now the fun began…
Within a few minutes, I learned that many people across the nation are stamping and tracing the travel routes of bills of various denominations (all at Where's George). So where do you get your Where's George stamp… at the Where's George gift shop. Are people entering serial numbers from bills… yes, they are… and at rates that are absolutely mind boggling… did I mention that this is addictive… some individuals have entered the serial numbers from literally tens of thousands of bills. Because of the sizable amount of money represented by the number of bills some people have entered, it is evident that some Where's George addicts are converting their entire paychecks into dollar bills, and then stamping and registering all of the bills before they spend a single one.
There are lotteries (and one would assume prizes) at Where's George in which people compete to see who registered the bill most frequently subsequently registered, with all kinds of fun but sensible rules involved. Even more fun are the discussion forums where you can talk with other bill tracing addicts… and, believe me, plenty of people are actively participating in the discussion forums at Where's George. You might want to tell others, for example, a funny story about how you obtained a specific bill. Some real “bill tracer aficionados” talk of stamp designs, and which stamps are most effectively seen when someone picks up a dollar bill… critical stuff for the serious bill tracer. Users can also post links to their personal or business websites so you can get to know them better. One Where's George user has posted a map of the US, depicting all of the states in which bills he has registered have traveled… as I recall, he was hoping that someone would pick up a bill and take it with them to New Jersey so he could have all 50 states covered. You can also get the latest news on bills of all denomination… including plenty of interesting trivia related to the new twenty!
Addictive stuff… doesn’t seem like it from the outside… but in my estimation, a quick visit to Where's George is likely to prove otherwise… I’m checking every bill that passes through my hands… and although the Where's George website is temporarily offline today (as they re-locate their servers), I will get back online ASAP to order my own personal Where's George stamp. If anyone tells me it is illegal to stamp money, then I definitely won’t do it and would immediately advise everyone that we do not condone the stamping of money (hee, hee, hee).
By the way, when the people at Where's George move those servers, do they move them in armored cars and take them to a new top secret location… possibly in a cave in south-central Texas… maybe in the secret government vault at the base of Mt. Rushmore… perhaps behind a secret panel at NSA headquarters? Just keep those servers safe, people… there are a lot of bill locators out here who are counting on you!
For a bit more fun… check out D is for Dollar, where you will learn that a dollar bill is also known as a “rutabaga, ace, bean, boffo, bone, buck, bullet, case note, clam, coconut, fish, frog skin, lizard, peso, rock, scrip, simoleon, or yellowback. Dr. W. David Currie |
