Money the bank can't give to customers

I was at the bank this morning, and the man just to my left casually -- too casually -- asked the teller if he had any one thousand dollar bills. The teller said they weren't made any more, sorry about that. The guy said he knew that, but he still wanted one. The teller said he'd never even seen one, nor a five hundred dollar bill, either, for that matter. The guy tried to make the teller promise that he'd hold any thousands or five hundreds that came in, just for him. The teller said he didn't think he could do that, sorry.

At this point an assistant manager came over and explained that the bank was required to send any $1,000 or $500 bills to the Federal Reserve, and was forbidden to give them out to customers.

Whereupon the customer swore he'd never ever tell.

Whereupon the bank people told him that wasn't the point.

Whereupon the guy begged. And got no sympathy. So then he tried to ferret out how much they got in silver certificates, and whether they ever got something else (I didn't catch it clearly, but I assume it was another bit of no-longer-issued money).

Whereupon the assistant manager explained that the bank wasn't in the collectibles business, sorry.

Whereupon the teller waved the next customer up. End of exchange.

I almost said something to my teller to the effect of "I wonder how long ago they stopped making them?" Thank goodness I didn't, because now that I find that, ahem, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, uh, it seems that "The $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 denominations have not been printed since 1946."

1946? Before I was born? There haven't been any $500 or $1000 bills in my lifetime (except in old books and movies, of which I've taken in several) and I never noticed?

I guess that tells you something about my lifestyle ;-).

From the same page linked above at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

Silver certificates, authorized in 1878 and issued in exchange for silver dollars, accounted for nearly all of the $1 notes in circulation until November 1963, when the first $1 Federal Reserve notes were issued.

Now that I got the memo on. I was rather young in 1963, but I remember a lot of fretting associated with going away from silver certificates. Don't ask me now what the fuss was all about, but some folks seemed to think it was a big deal at the time, and frightened some of us kids with their open anxiety. That's all I really remember, the sense of fear and disruption. Thank goodness the worrywarts were wrong yet again, eh?

For lots of links to sites with answers to commonly asked questions about U.S. money, past and present, see this page provided by the Library of Congress.