Many years ago, I became aware of a cool website called "Where's George?".
"George" as in George Washington -- the George Washington that appears on U.S. dollar bills.
You may have seen something before about wheresgeorge.com. Maybe something that looked like this:
It's a neat (and somewhat geeky) project that works like this......
- head to wheresgeorge.com
- register for a free account (optional)
- take a dollar bill out of your wallet
- locate the serial number on that bill
- key that serial number into the website
- if someone else has previously entered that bill, you will find out when that was and where the bill was at that time
- if the bill has not previously been registered on wheresgeorge, it becomes "your" bill and you'll receive a notification (via e-mail) the next time it's entered on the site
It really is an ingenious and creative idea. If you had time to register bunches of bills on the site, I'll bet you would get notifications back all the time.
As for the bills that I've entered, the vast majority of them have not been reported again to wheresgeorge, after they left my possession.
In all, I have reported 57 bills to wheresgeorge, with the first one being all the way back in 1999. (man! I was just 25 then!)
Only 2 of the 57 bills have had another hit on them, subsequent to when I reported. definitely not a good statistical percentage!
As shown above, there are even stamps that can be purchased to call others' attention to the bills that you have registered. I suppose if someone adopted this as their hobby, the stamp would come in very handy, rather than having to write the web address on all the bills you're registering.
Honestly, I had pretty much forgotten about this currency-tracking project until yesterday when I received not 1 but 2 bills marked with the wheresgeorge website.
And yes, I did record them on the site tonight.
Which means there are now 59 Georges circulating around on which I'm eagerly (?) awaiting a hit.
I'm such a nerd.
Out for now.....
Matt
p.s. you can find out more about the wheresgeorge project here: