[Steve Wozniak’s] damn the man, devil may care attitude continues to show with this recent interview. Here he shows off the pad of $2 bills he had made up. He’ll sell one sheet of them to you for $5. Do you think that’s a scam? He say’s “you’d be an idiot not to buy it for five bucks” and after we dug a little deeper, he’s right.
Now, you really need to watch the video after the break before you read the rest of this feature. Trust us, it’s extremely entertaining. [Woz] mentions that he hired a local printer to make the pads for him, but he got the paper from a high-quality print shop. They meet the specs of the federal government and by law they’re legal tender. Each pad has a page of four bills which can be torn off of the gummed top, and there are perforations between each bill for easy separation.
Nothing illegal is going on here. We followed one of the YouTube commentor’s links to this article [Woz] wrote about his $2 bill exploits. The high-quality printer he buys the paper from is the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. He buys the bills in sheets and pays a premium for that option. Each $2 bill costs him $3. But the fun he’s had over the years is probably worth it.
[Thanks Rob]
Hey, I’ve got a great solution for that round of deflation coming up.
Your post title is wrong. He doesn’t print them. He just has them made into pads. It seems like the interviewer in the video doesn’t understand this.
Not really. Woz is a troll at heart, he’s trolling interviewer and audience by telling them he had them “printed.”
He ‘has them printed,’ just like he ‘has them perforated.’
he actually does have them perforated. he does not have them printed. He buys them at this website, http://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/2currencysheetsbeptestsheet.aspx. they come without perforation. His printer friend perforates and glues them into a pad.
Top 10 signs you have too much $$.
Wrong. Woz Purchases LEGAL UNCUT SHEETS FROM THE FEDERAL RESERVE, then takes them to a local print shop to add glue to the top.
Very important detail there. No matter how close they matched or how much he spent making them, if they’re not printed by the Treasury they’re not legal and you’ll have the Secret Service to deal with.
Side note: Why are the Secret Service tasked with that? Seems their time should be wholey spent protecting the president.
Look into the history of the Secret Service (it’s actually quite interesting). They were never intended to protect the president, Lincoln created the division to clean up the currency mess resulting from the US Civil War. It wasn’t till Kennedy that they were tasked with protecting presidents.
Actually started protecting POTUS and other officials after President William McKinnely.was shot.
The Secret Service was originally founded by Lincoln for the sole purpose of tracking counterfeit currency. Protecting the President somehow worked it’s way into the Secret Service later on.
Paper US currency isn’t printed by or for the Treasury, and hasn’t been since the Federal Reserve Note was introduced*, but rather by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The US Mint produces coins that are legal tender for the UST.
* Excepting the Silver Certificate, whose revival by JFK’s executive order 11110 may have led to his assassination.
He never tells you what he pays I’ve heard each $2 bill costs him $3 it seems the joke is worth the money that’s how it’s not illegal!!!
Dude you have no idea what you’re saying,, you responded so quickly you failed to realize what is going on. This is exactly the problem the internet has created,,talking before thinking. Good luck with that flaw.
Actually, the sheets are purchased from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Love the Idea.. now if I could only get a Page with Woz’s signature that would be worth framing!
Sorry, snap commenting. But for real, this post made it look like Woz was having his own money printed, in that not-so-legal way.
That’s the joke.
But for real, this post made it look like Woz was having his own money printed, in that not-so-legal way.
Respectfully the post could have have appeared that way to only those who failed to read it through to the end. being a troll
I don’t really understand because the (intentional) lack of details…
Does the paper cost more than $2 per bill? Do they come pre-numbered?
Oh I see now, cute Woz. Cute.
It cost’s 4-5 cents per note. That came from the BEP.
here’s the deal.
You can play legal acrobatics with money so long as you are not an activist speaking truth to power, exposing the fraud in the two party system, and things like that.
But if you do anything with money other than earn, pay taxes on it, and spend it, and you are an activist or “patriot”, they will use it as an excuse to legally crucify you and maybe even put you in prison too after they take everything you have.
If you want to “make money” mine bitcoins.
What are you smoking, and is there any left for the rest of us?
I wish I could upvote comments on hackaday.
“If you want to “make money” mine bitcoins.”
Or maybe, get a job, like everyone else…
you totally missed the point of those quotations
Rambling != ‘quotations’
Detailed explanation for the slow ones: If you have a job, you get money; but you do not make money.
In first case the money had already been made by someone else and is just moved to you; in the second case it is created
Lol.
Can I use bitcoins to pay the huge electricity bill I ran up in order to create said bitcoins?
yes
“Get a job” Phah – boring, I wanna buy a good printer & I’m sorted, 1 sheet = $4.99 anyone?!
what are bitchoinions anyway?
bitcoins? gimme a break! you must be new here.
smart people invest in cosbycoins
Few sound bytes scream ‘lazy thinker’ louder than ‘speak truth to power’. Congratulations – you are what you despise.
One problem with thinking in general is that we need to abstract to cope with the big picture.
I detest the “speak truth to power” crowd (they apparently didn’t get the memo about all power coming from the muzzle of a gun) but there’s an important lesson here.
When people talk this way, they are substituting their own internal index label for the actual thought. People who say things like this are using the (discourse) equivalent of text speak when the rest of us expect formal phrasing.
L8R = Later
“Speak truth to power” = disagreeing out loud with “THEM” when everyone else won’t. We used to call this civil disobedience.
I believe such adaptations to be evolutionary – and also that they expose a streamlined thought process that now excludes any desire to re-examine the foundation of those thoughts.
Our language and culture are filled with these shorthand notations – “Support the troops” “Fight the Power” “Those Damn liberals” “Welfare Queen” “Gay Marriage” “Wall Street” “Creating Jobs” “Bankers”, etc. and not a single one means anything without context.
What’s interesting is that the context is often assumed to be present by the speaker and audience, even when it is not. I used to think that these assumptions indicated borderline mental illness, but it’s obvious to me that a society requires these internal abstract contexts to function. I believe that this might be some weird inverse function of the cooperation mechanism, related like time and frequency when doing Fourier transforms.
I also believe that this abstraction mechanism might be the epigenetic foundation of tribal politics, and acts as a sort of behavioral catalyst that lets us dispense with actually beating each other up all the time in favor of just saying stuff…
And a lot of people (myself included) have been binding up pads of 25 $2 bills for years and freaking out the ignorant. You don’t need a printer, just cut some cardstock to size and then use rubber cement to bind them on a short side.
Lotsa amateur Secret Service wannabees out there, so use caution in handing these out – it’s a drag when you have to wait for three hours to discover that someone in charge knows about the $2 bill.
So can we do this with 1 dollar bills — will have to do this!!
I’m confused, after reading the article and watching the video, I do not see him directly mentioning printing the bills himself, only ordering them from the government and gluing them together.
If he was getting them printed, how on earth is this legal?
Again, as other commenters have stated, that is the joke…
Woz is not printing them, he is buying uncut sheets and having a printer (for those not old enough to remember such a thing, that is a place where they make printed materials….not a box hooked up to your ‘puter…) make them into perforated pads.
The interesting catch here is the serial numbers…
A dedicated troll cares not for money.
What is Woz email, I want on entire pad !!!
Here is the official place to buy uncut currency sheets:
http://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/uncutcurrency.aspx
Coin and currency resellers charge extra.
Sheets of 4x $1 are $16.25 each. Sheets of 32x $1 are $61 each. Sheets of $2 are currently “out of stock” predicted to be available “summer 2012”, or you may get them from resellers.
Woz hired a printer to perforate and bind his sheets into a pad.
Great story. Considering how the look of US bills has changed over the past few years and the relative rarity of $2 bills, I’m surprised we don’t hear of more cases like this.
I’ll take 5000 of them, then head right to the bank.
I thought that too,
but how do you get in touch with WOZ to make the deal.
I think he “sells” them to the people in front of him when they say “can I have one”
Yes, it would be great to “make” $8 from $5.
I emailed him 6 years ago (!) asking about this. Here is his response:
“Yikes, these things are too precious to sell in such a way.
I pay $3 for each bill on sheets.
A pad of mine is 50 sheets of 4 bills each, for $400 face value but $600 cost.
But you can buy bills from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing yourself. I can’t hand out entire pads or I’ll run out too soon. Sorry.
Woz”
If you’ve got a bunch of precut $2 bills lying around you can make your own pad: http://www.instructables.com/id/2-Bill-Pad/
Or use ones. They’re easier to get, but score lower on the troll scale.
My Grandmother used to work at a bank, she did that for my Dad for his birthday one year, but with sequential $1 bills.
Woz is a fraud according to his friend and business partner Steve Jobs. He was allegedly scamming the phone companies for years. I don’t blame anyone for not trusting him and refusing to do business with him.
Hmm that coming from Jobs, a man that parked in handicapped spots and had no license plate for decades. Nevermind buying residency in several states only to sell them as soon as he got to the top of the organ transplant list. He was a horrible human being.
Color me unimpressed.
And even more crazy.. Right before his transplant..
A Foxconn employee, (foxconn makes all iTrash products in china slave shops) stole one of the iphone prototypes and Apple/Foxconn internal security forces were dispatched to his home, and at some point after they “shamed” him for stealing it, he threw himself out of a highrise appt building. It was ruled an appalling suicide.
On the plus side.. Steve got his transplant.. Lot of good it did the greedy F@#*.
Yes.. cry because the phone company got “scammed”..
Never mind the RAPE they’ve been dealing to the public ever since mama bell’s birth.
I’m glad shes being crushed to death under her outdated and dilapidated copper wire network. I hope she choaks to death upon all the billions upon billions shes extorted from the public and used to sell and buy herself in and out of conglomerance attempting keep her true self hidden from federal legislation.
There has only ever been, and will ever only be.. AT&T.
She’ll just sell a part of herself, to herself and change the name, then sell it back to another previously name changed self, then absorbs back into her former self, just to start the process all over again.
Mama Bell can burn in hell.
Stop crying. You use their service so pay up.
Now, the real problem is the gov that says is protecting your interest but instead forbids you to offer a competitive product in that arena.
If you want to direct your rage do so to the gov.
Has been reported by some, that Jobs himself was right there along side Wozniak and others doing the same.[shrug] wouldn’t be the first time the pot got away with calling the pot black,while making a boat load of money along the way.
You mean Steve “I’ll go halves with you if you do all the work – then keeps most of the money” Jobs?
Yeah he’s a peach.
there is no way this can be legal. dollar bills are bank notes indicating the government owes you that much money. saying someone else owes you money from something you made is illegal. woz should expect a visit from the secret service if he hasnt already.
It is a joke. It’s real money from the real national mint made up in a way to look fake for the lulz.
He buys uncut sheets of bills from the Federal Reserve and has them perforated and bound (by the aforementioned printer) to make people think they are fake. He doesn’t get them printed.
You forgetting about the Nixon Shock
I’d take them to the gentlemen’s club
Hes expert in talking and deception. He even explains the process. Good gauge for idiocracy detection though. I can’t replicate this here in nz though.
we should try though :-)
Engadget got played. I heard about Woz buying sheets of uncut 2$ bills and having them bound and perforated. As mentioned earlier you can buy legal tender from the Govt web site http://www.moneyfactorystore.gov/uncutcurrency.aspx
I am sure by now the Secret Service knows to ask anybody who calls was it Woz. Honestly I think he loves the attention he gets from all his practical/ unpractical jokes.
Want. To. Buy.
Dear
Santa Woz,This year for Christmas I would like…
AGH! Messed up.
Want. To. Buy.
Dear
SantaWoz,This year for Christmas I would like…
I’d like to see him take those to Taco Bell!
I remember reading about this years ago. Neat and all, but why is this on HaD?
I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but I remember this from years ago, too.
Woz is hilarious
Hack that currency! As if life wasn’t complicated enough, I then have to explain that it is real money! Oh what a card!
I keep wondering if this played when josh was let go by engadget. (he claimed he left himself)
Either way I thought it was not nice from woz to not return the respect got and to do all this BS, it’s something that disappointed me and possibly gives me an insight why he got along with steve jobs so well.
As for josh, he now has his pretty influential http://www.theverge.com, so all’s well for him
The beauty of it is he never said he had them printed. He said he had them made up at a local print shop from higher quality materials.
The Engaget guy is the one to suggest Woz printed them.
Genius.
But the engadget guys accepted it all because they admire the woz and respected him and were flattered by his visit, and I think a joke is funny but he went a bit far in only pointing out it was nonsense days later and basically he made anything he said on the show (or in fact any interview) doubtful and there can be no separation anymore between wozniak talking complete BS or being earnest. And thus he ruined his own reputation really, by basically pissing over an appearance that was meant to be informal but serious and treating it like they were a joke and not meant to be taken serious.
It left a sour taste for me.
You used to be able to buy the uncut sheets through novelty vendor catalogs that come out around Christmas, anyone could do it. The fact that he makes it up like a notepad is hilarious though. XD
If he had done it on letterman or something sure.
Kind of miguided statement
SBC = SouthwesternBellCorp – A spin-off of AT&T due to AntiTrust Lawsuit against AT&T
SBC **BOUGHT** AT&T
Thus THERE IS NO AT&T, simply a rebranded MA BELL TELLY CO!
SBC is NOW masquerading as At&T. Have we come full circle?
Comment was cut off…
Was supposed to have quote
“There has only ever been, and will ever only be.. AT&T. ”
before the “Kind of misguided statement”
I read about this trick with $2 bills years ago, only it was $20 bills and you stuck them in a checkbook. They strongly advised that you NOT try to use it at the bank.
Quote from the video: “I got a printer in my home town … California to make these pads for me and I got them the supplies from a higher quality printer.”
Looks like his higher quality printer is the federal mint and the local printer is something like a copy shop. He is buying the sheets, looks like his is telling the truth…
Jct: There’s no reason for him to have made it look like the real thing, that got the Liberty Dollar busted. I also issue my own private currency denominated in Hours and with my picture on the credit. He could too. I’ll take Wozniak Hours if he’ll take mine.
No, not a single one of you is aware of slavery by usury and the creation and issuance of a debt based “money” system couple with a “progressive” graduated income tax.
None of you really know freedom because none of you have ever had it. Your lives are already bought and sold, and you will pay your taskmaster the cost of keeping you enslaved.
Mock what I say, but know this. A free man dies only once. Cowards die daily.
None of you will ever NOT be cowards when it comes to freeing yourselves from the shackels the Federal Reserve’s owners have placed you in. The tax man will come a calling to collecy your “fair share” of the 20 plus TRILLION debt YOU owe.
Perhaps you can call upon your military to help you fight back against the money power, but then I digress, they are off figthing for G.E., BP, Exxon, and whole host of other Corporate Conglomerates that have raised themselves up around the Federal Reserve. It’s not YOUR government and its not YOUR military. It’s theirs, and they are NOT going to help you.
You will see more killings, senseless acts of violence as the society of America crumbles to ashes, knowing there is a gigantic fraud that creates the class warfare. And it is warfare.
Know that.
O RLY?
Is it a full moon or something? What’s with all the wackos.
Memo to self, make some “legal” looking notes with “£1.337 Bank of Hackers”, with skull and crossbones and a few anti-MPAA and anti-RIAA signs on them.
Ought to sell well around Halloween.
Making sure to put “This is NOT LEGAL TENDER” clearly on both sides :-)