Old $2 bills could now be worth thousands after recent sale at auction

Question, how much is a $2 bill worth?

If you answered 'two dollars', then you might be surprised to learn that you're not always right.

Obviously most of the time a $2 bill is worth exactly what it says on the bill, but this is not always the case.

Now, as a quick caveat, please don't try to pay for a fancy dinner with a $2 bill by arguing that it's 'worth thousands', that's not how this works.

No, it's actually that some runs of bills are worth more to people who collect money.

And I'm not talking about Jeff Bezos, I mean rare coins and bills.

It could be a particular run of bills or an anniversary coin minted for a special occasion.

Or, as in the case of a $2 bill, it has a very low serial number on.

According to Heritage Auctions, the bill was printed in 2003, and recently sold at auction for a whopping $2,400. But that's not it, because it was then resold for $4,000.

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While some bills and coins are of interest to collectors because of their special status or commemorative designs, others are for more mundane but hilarious reasons.

One such example is a quarter which was minted in 2005 in Kansas state.

Normally the currency would carry the motto 'In God We Trust' stamped on it.

But someone at the mint made an error for this particular run of coinage, meaning that the coin instead read 'In God We Rust'.

Amazing.

The coins can fetch up to $100 for collectors.

Oddly enough, misprints are also desirable on dollar bills, with a 2006 misprinted bill being worth up to $200.

There's some irony in a bill which is worth nothing due to an error actually being worth more than if it was printed correctly.

m.czosnek / Getty

Surely there's some sort of motivational quote about our flaws making us more valuable in there somewhere?

Serial numbers are a particularly interesting one, because it seems that the more unlikely the number combination, the more valuable the bill.

For example, so-called 'ladder bills' have numbers which are all ascending or descending. These are valuable in themselves, but more valuable still are so-called 'perfect ladders'.

Think like poker. A 'perfect ladder' would have 12345678, or 87654321. These can go for upwards of $5,000.

But what about the most ridiculous difference in value between the face value and collectors' value you can have?

That must surely go to the 1792 Birch Cent.

This was the very first cent struck by the United States mint. Just ten are known to be in existence, and are likely to have been handled by figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

In 2015, one even sold at auction for almost $2.6 million.

Not a bad return, eh?