Do you know where your dollar bills have traveled?
I’m on vacation on Cape Cod this summer, staying with my parents in the house where I grew up.
Most days, we walk, bike or drive to the homemade ice cream shop down the hill. My chocolate sundae tasted especially sweet a few days ago because I received a $1 bill in change with intriguing red, stamped markings. “Track This Bill” said the stamp, followed by a URL for www.wheresgeorge.com.
But oh joy! Unlike Alice puzzling over the White Rabbit’s invitation, I knew just what to do.
The “point” of that website — if there is something as prosaic as a point here — is to upload and track individual paper bills as they move around the country.
My ice cream store-acquired bill with serial number G55907542H (2006) had been first entered into the WheresGeorge website 35 days earlier in upstate New York. For each bill “found” and uploaded by another person, the site reports the distance traveled and “average speed.” After uploading the info, I learned the bill in my hand had traveled 306 miles and 8.6 miles per day.
In addition to uploading a bill’s serial number, the site prompts you to enter a few lines of description about where you found your bill and what condition it is in.
The “George” in the title is, of course, George Washington. But you can as easily upload serial numbers for Jeffersons, Lincolns, Hamiltons and Jacksons.
The WheresGeorge site launched in December 1998.
I created a profile there nearly 20 years ago, and entered my first few $1 bills in December 1999. I recall reading a newspaper story that year about WheresGeorge. Even then it appealed to my money nerdiness. Funny enough, the site hasn’t significantly updated its format since 1999. It looks just how you’d expect a 1999-era website to look: pretty clunky. But it still does the job in 2019.
According to my personalized stats, I have entered 56 bills for a total value of $201. Three of these have had “hits,” meaning another user has found my bills in the wild and uploaded the serial number to the site. I have, in turn, found 12 bills previously marked by other WheresGeorge users. My ice cream shop bill was the first one I’ve come across since 2016, so it was the first time I’d logged onto the site in three years.
I reached out to Brian Brummer in La Vernia, known as “Big B” on WheresGeorge and the highestranked Texan on the site
Big B’s stats, as of this writing: 305,150 bills entered, and 51,802 bills have “hits.”
While Big B’s bills flit around the country, he himself is the most traveled person I’ve ever corresponded with. He’s been to 117 countries. Not only has he uploaded bills from all 50 states, he’s managed to upload bills from all 254 counties in Texas.
I wasn’t wrong in thinking that WheresGeorge serves as a key social media site for its active users. The socializing has moved from online to in-person. Big B has attended 117 in-person gatherings of fellow WheresGeorge enthusiasts — and counting. The next Texas get-together will be in Austin in October, followed by one in La Vernia in 2020.
I asked Big B what participants shared in common. He replied, “Most Georgers do have an interest in statistics and many have an interest in geography . ... Like any hobby, people carry it to extremes and others just enjoy it as something to fill the passing time.”
That sounds right. I am the guy who orders $1,000 worth of $2 bills from my bank just so I always have a bunch to buy my daily coffee with, or for my weekly poker game buy-in. So, yeah, I’m a little quirky about my money hobbies. But I recognize Big B and MrNiceGuy have taken the game to a whole other level.