Texas Printing Company’s Mistake Means Collectors Can Cash In

Here's a reason to use cash: The $1 bill hanging out in your wallet could be worth a LOT more than that.

CNBC did a story on rare, misprinted $1 bills that sell for thousands online. But the hard part is you need TWO of them.

Every bill the government prints gets its own serial number. But in 2016, a printer in Texas accidentally used the same ones as a printer in D.C.

If you find two that match up, they could be worth a good amount of money. One set sold for about $2,300 in March, and another set sold for over $7,000 a few years ago.

There aren't just a few of them out there. Over 6 MILLION duplicate ones exist, but over 14 billion $1 bills are in circulation. So that's around one in every 2,300.

Finding two of them on your own is practically impossible. But the good news is you don't have to.

There's a website called Project2013B that connects people who find them. They've got around 80 serial numbers listed right now. So if you find the match, you could split the money. They've already made 16 connections this year.

Here are the three things to look for:

1.  It has to say "Series 2013" next to Washington's head. That's the year the design was first used.

2.  The seal to the left of his head has to be a "B". That's the branch of the Federal Reserve that issued it. There are 12 of them. "B" means New York.

3.  The serial number starts with a "B" followed by one of these two sets of serial numbers: 1 through 250,000 or 3,200,001 through 9,600,000.  (They're printed as:  00000001 to 00250000  or 03200001 to 09600000.)

If that's too much to remember, just look for "2013" and does the number start with a "B" then a zero? If yes, hang onto it and check it out online. It could be worth a LOT more than a buck.