Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
While wasting time on Facebook I ran across this advertisement:
"Get your hands on a $2 Bill in uncirculated condition for only $1"
In the back of my head, something's telling me it isn't legal to do what the sponsor is advertising: I think it is illegal to sell currently circulating U.S. currency for less than its face value.
Is my memory right or wrong?
18 USC Ch. 17 contains the laws against doing things to US currency and coins, and sale of currency is not included. So it is legal to set currency for an amount above or below face value, the former being more common. There might be some illegal aspect to the particular offer (money laundering, fraud – implying that they are real money, counterfeiting) but no law regulates the "sale" of US currency.
Obviously, selling U.S. currency for less than face value is not a sustainable business proposition. It is so suspect without strings attached, that it would attract attention as way to launder stolen currency otherwise. At any rate, generally, the law doesn't punish you for engaging in self-punishing transactions.
One presumes that there are some strings attached to the offer - at a minimum setting up an account to facilitate future transactions in a "loss leader" transaction, and possibly a tie in with some other purchase (possibly with a right to cancel or return the goods at no extra charge except possibly shipping) that makes the whole transaction nothing more than fanciful way to describe a $1 coupon on the transaction as a whole.
Sure. Banks do it all the time when they charge fees for withdrawing currency from ATM machines. Even if you believe that they are charging fees for a "service", the same can be said about any transaction. They also sell rolls of coins for more than the nominal value of the coins.
One may want to argue that banks sell it for more than the nominal value rather than less.
But then the counterparty is doing the opposite.
Anyone buying currency for more than its nominal value is actually selling currency for less than its nominal value.
That answers the actual question.
But the ad, which brought the question on, may have some slight of hand. It's not clear to me what they mean by "uncirculated condition." When it comes to currency, "uncirculated" actually means that it hasn't been issued and cannot be used as legal tender. By saying "uncirculated condition" rather than "uncirculated", the ad (almost certainly deliberately) introduces an ambiguity into the question of whether the currency may be spent legally.
