Brookline, Massachusetts, Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Most dollar
bills are anonymous. All but about 15 million of them.
That's how many ones -- and fives, tens, twenties and
hundreds -- have had their journeys around the U.S. and the world
chronicled at www.wheresgeorge.com, a Web site that lets the
curious follow their money as it flows through the economy.
The three-year-old site has brought couples together, sparked
friendships and inspired classroom projects. It's tracked bills
from Natchez, Mississippi, to Santa Monica, California, and from
Pittsburgh to Keflavik, Iceland.
``People have told me it's nice to find a highly interactive
diversion on the Internet where I'm not trying to sell them
anything and I'm not trying to profit off them,'' said Hank Eskin,
37, the site's creator. ``It's just fun.''
The site has attracted more than a million users. Some are
inquisitive about where that five dollar bill they found in the
laundromat came from. Others are so obsessive they've spent months
recording the serial numbers off thousands of bills in the online
database. One user entered more than 121,000.
Enthusiasts usually stamp currency with the Web site's
address and a note asking anyone who finds it to record the serial
number and the zip code where they spent it. Fans of the site
track ``hits'' as subsequent users log in the numbers.
The practice doesn't violate any laws. While defacing
currency is illegal, merely stamping or writing on bills doesn't
fit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's definition of an
improper act: intentionally rendering currency unfit to be used.
``I used to mark bills when I was a kid, thinking I might get
one back one day,'' said Colleen Spiegler, 31. She became a
registered user of the Web site in mid-1999, about six months
after it was started.
Marriage and Money
The Pittsburgh resident is now married to an ex-boyfriend who
contacted her after he saw her photo in an article about the Web
site. ``There are so many goals you can reach -- like getting all
50 states,'' she said. She has seen dollar bills she entered in
the database travel to Korea, Puerto Rico, Iceland and the Arctic
Circle.
``It's always fulfilling to get one more of those hits,''
said Spiegler, who has entered the serial numbers for more than
16,000 bills on the site. ``I'm waiting for a hit in Guam.''
The Web site tracks about $89 million of the $584 billion in
U.S. paper currency that is in circulation worldwide. Just $195
billion of that is in the U.S., according to the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York.
``I was going to lunch one day and I had a dollar bill in my
pocket that had a message written around the edge of it that said,
`Write this message on 10 other dollar bills and good luck will
come to you,''' said Eskin, who lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
``I wondered who wrote this on the bill and where did it come
from.''
Unique Serial Number
It occurred to Eskin that each bill has a unique serial
number. ``In a flash'' the idea of a Web site that could track
bills was born, he said. Eskin, a computer database consultant,
spends about 20 hours a week working on the site. He used the
project to learn how to develop databases that could work on the
Internet.
Though Eskin started the site in December 1998, it didn't
start telling stories until he added a feature that allows people
to record user notes about each bill. ``Someone will say, `I found
this bill in the collection plate at church,' and then the very
next entry is, `I got this at a strip club,''' Eskin said. ``Those
kinds of juxtapositions of entries are hilarious.''
Even dollar bills that don't go abroad take some circuitous
journeys. One George -- as dollar bills with the image of George
Washington are called in the Web site's vernacular -- started its
travels at a cinema in Natchez, Mississippi, in January 2000. Four
months later it bought shoes in Santa Monica, California. In
November, it purchased lunch at a school in Warren, Michigan.
By the time this George landed in Twin Rocks, Pennsylvania,
this month, it was looking wrinkled and old. And no wonder: The
average dollar bill only circulates for a year and a half,
according to the Fed. The George from Natchez lasted at least six
months longer.
Abes and Bens
Abes (fives, with Abe Lincoln on the front) usually live at
least two years outside of bank vaults, and Bens (for Benjamin
Franklin, pictured on the hundred-dollar bill) circulate the
longest, at nine years, Fed statistics show.
One user created a Where's George encyclopedia to list all
the slang that's sprung up among devotees. A ``boomerang'' is a
bill that was entered in one city, traveled to someplace far away,
and then returned to the original city. A ``sleeper'' is a bill
that takes more than 100 days to get a hit.
A ``Naked George'' is a hit with a user note suggesting it
was spent or received at a strip club or massage parlor.
The site also measures how fast money moves. The Natchez
George, for instance, traveled at 0.8 miles an hour on its 1,500-
mile journey to Santa Monica.
Economists have used measures of velocity, or the rate at
which money changes hands, to get clues about where consumer
incomes are heading. Eskin's database, since it counts on user
interest to get bills entered into the Web site, isn't scientific
enough to give economists much new information, said Richard G.
Anderson, an economist with the St. Louis Fed Bank.
Still, ``It sounds like an interesting toy,'' Anderson said.
