I Found George!

I found George! I did!

No, not that George.  Everybody knows he was buried at Mount Vernon after basically being bled to death by his doctors.   Yay, the good 'ole days!

No, the George I found looks like this:

WheresGeorge.com is quite a hoot.  Created in 1998, it allows folks to track money by simply entering the Series and Serial Number while cross-referencing the holder's zip code.  Voila!  When others find the same bill, the database can create a history of the bill's travels.  You know you have a WheresGeorge bill when you see the stamp. It is in the upper corner in red in my photo.   (Yes, technically, stamping the bill is considered "defacing" and is therefore illegal, but the Secret Service has openly declared they basically don't care in this case.)

It appears my bill, a part of the 2009 series, was first tagged in Rochester, New York on December 18, 2010.  Nothing else was added until I logged it in a few minutes ago!  During that time (1 year, 92 days, 9 hours and 34 minutes), it officially traveled a meager 290 miles.  

"Officially" is the key word there.  It could have been to Alaska.  California. Florida. Hell, maybe all three!

By comparison, for those of you who are curious, the record bill has 15 hits and traveled almost 4,200 miles in three years.  It has not been recorded since March 2005.  

I can only imagine how it could have been used.  Maybe it was dumped into the donation bucket at a National Park.  Maybe it was placed in the hand of a girl scout so the purchaser could take home a box of cookies. Maybe it ended up in the g-string of a.....ehhh, nevermind. 

For the time being, George will be tucked into the corner of my wallet. I plan on spending him on vacation in a few months. The plan calls for Arizona in June.   

Lets get this bill movin', eh?