[Porsche-O-Phile]

Real money - silver and gold certificates. I have a few. Current federal reserve notes are worthless and "pay to the bearer on demand" absolutely nothing.

I believe you'd run into problems trying to redeem one these days for gold or silver. Besides the fact that $1 or $5 is an extremely small amount (largely due to devaluation and the fact that the certificates' values have been pegged to worthless FRNs). The standard line as I understand it is that all remaining certificates are redeemable for FRNs of the same denomination and will then be destroyed once so redeemed (just like all other "retired" paper currency). This effectively makes them as worthless as the FRNs themselves. Personally I'd love to see someone challenge the legality of this in the courts and demand a $5 silver certificate be redeemable for $5 in silver based on the price of silver in the year the certificate was issued, or at least prior to the formal abolition of the gold/silver standard. That'd be fair IMHO but I doubt it'd ever go anywhere and if it did the plaintiff would likely disappear or fall victim to a sudden unexplained heart attack.

The creation of the modern FRN completely and systematically dismantled the gold/silver standard by simultaneously invalidating the value of the certificates (pegging them to FRNs) and devaluing the USD to the point that $X in precious metals is now a pittance. Back in the mid to late 1800s, $5 or $10 or $20 in gold was a significant quantity - no more (gold ran about $18.90 an ounce through the mid-19 teens, when Woodrow Wilson created the Federal Reserve, whereupon price began to increase). The subsequent spike in price ($20 now buys 0.0158 ounce of gold, meaning a dollar from 1910 is now worth a little over a penny based on a gold price of +/- $1,200/oz). This is the effect of the devaluation of the USD which is accelerating at a frightening rate (gold price has more than tripled since 2005 and more than quintupled since 2000 but I digress...)

They are very cool pieces of history though. When the federal reserve notes eventually become worthless and the US currency collapses ( which I'm convinced is inevitable) they will have real historical value in documenting the transition of the USA from a real economy to a fabricated and mythical fiat economy.