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The Modern Bill, 1976 to Today
Announced in November 1975, released on Jefferson's birthday, and printed in bursts ever since.
November 3, 1975
The Announcement
On November 3, 1975, Treasury Secretary William E. Simon announced that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing would produce $2 Federal Reserve Notes for the first time. The Bureau had wanted the denomination back since 1969, and the Richmond Fed reported support from Congress, the Federal Reserve System, and the bicentennial commission.
The pitch was money. The Richmond Fed laid out the math in early 1976: every note cost 1.525 cents to print, ones made up 55 to 60 percent of all pieces of currency in circulation, and "by replacing about half the 'ones' with an equivalent dollar volume of 'twos', thus decreasing the number of bills in circulation, the Federal Government will save about $27 million (in 1976 dollars) in printing, handling, storage, and shipping costs between 1976 and 1981." The economics page follows that arithmetic to the present day.
The Treasury was emphatic that this was not a souvenir. "The reissue of the bill is not intended as simply a commemorative act for this year, but rather it signifies the permanent addition of another U. S. denomination. Printing of this bill will continue in subsequent years, and there will be no 'collector's' or other special issues of it."
Sources: CoinWeek, "The Bicentennial $2 Bill: First of a Kind" · Richmond Fed, "The $2 Bill Returns" (PDF)
April 13, 1976
Release Day
The new note was a Federal Reserve Note, not a United States Note, so a black Federal Reserve Bank seal replaced the numeral 2 at left of the portrait and the Treasury seal and serial numbers turned green. The back was completely new: Monticello gave way to an engraving based on John Trumbull's painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Bureau credits Peter M. Cocci as designer and Frederick Girsch as engraver of the vignette. Because the note is narrow, six seated figures at the edges were left out: George Wythe, William Whipple, Josiah Bartlett, and Thomas Lynch Jr. on the left, Thomas McKean and Philip Livingston on the right, "for aesthetic and security reasons."
The day before the release, on April 12, 1976, President Ford's daily diary records a 12:40 meeting with Secretary Simon, Mrs. Simon, their daughters Julie and Kathie, BEP Director James A. Conlon, and the press, "to present the President with a $2. Federal Reserve Note and an engraved reproduction of the Declaration of Independence." On the thirteenth Ford was at the Jefferson Memorial signing the resolution that made April 13 "Thomas Jefferson Day."
The Bureau began work in late summer 1975 and had notes coming off the press about seventeen weeks later, in December. To meet the launch, "11 million $2 bills are being printed each day," with 225 million ready for April 13 and another 150 million planned by July 4. Release day was chosen for Jefferson's birthday. Post offices postmarked the new notes for anyone who asked, and the Postal Service later estimated more than 10 million notes were stamped that day. More on the first-day postmarks.
Sources: Richmond Fed 1976 (omitted figures named in its footnote) · BEP $2 fact sheet (PDF) (Cocci and Girsch credits) · Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, President's Daily Diary, April 12, 1976 (PDF) · Daily Diary, April 13, 1976 (PDF) · CoinWeek · BEP, $2 Note
The Fizzle
Sold Like Hotcakes, Then Sat in Drawers
The launch was a genuine event. Money magazine's account of the day describes tens of thousands of Americans lining up, a Boston bank saying the notes sold "like hotcakes," a Houston banker comparing the crowd to "a bank run," and a Virginia postmaster's staff stamping 25,000 bills. Within days the rush was over. Gamblers thought the note unlucky, cashiers had no drawer slot for it, and most people saw no reason to carry it. Millions of the first-day notes are still uncirculated in safe-deposit boxes and desk drawers, worth what they were worth then: two dollars.
The Bureau still printed 590,720,000 Series 1976 notes between 1976 and 1978, and the Series 1976 count of 575,360,000 regular notes plus 15,360,000 star notes remains the largest single $2 series on record.
Sources: Money, "America's Very Brief Love Affair With the $2 Bill" · CoinWeek · USPaperMoney.info, Series 1976 $2 serial number table
1995 to 2021
Every Series Since
The design has not changed since 1976. What changes is the series year, printed to the right of the portrait, which advances when the signatures of the Treasurer and the Secretary of the Treasury change. Since Series 1995 every $2 has been printed at the Bureau's Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, marked by a small "FW" next to the face plate number.
- Series 1976. Printed December 1975 through September 1979 for all twelve Federal Reserve districts. Signatures Neff and Simon.
- Series 1995. Printed August through November 1996 for the Atlanta district only. Withrow and Rubin.
- Series 2003. Printed August through October 2003 for the Minneapolis district only. Marin and Snow.
- Series 2003A. Printed July through September 2006 for all twelve districts. Cabral and Snow.
- Series 2009. Printed February through August 2012 for seven districts. Rios and Geithner.
- Series 2013. Printed November 2013 through August 2019, the longest run of any modern series. Rios and Lew.
- Series 2017A. Printing began August 2019 for ten districts, 115,200,000 notes in the first two months. Carranza and Mnuchin. The BEP's $2 page still calls this "the most recent printing."
- Series 2021. Kansas City star notes appear in the BEP's March 2025 report, regular notes for Atlanta and San Francisco in September 2025 (38,400,000 and 51,200,000 that month), and New York, Cleveland, and San Francisco runs in December 2025. Malerba and Yellen signatures.
Print counts for each series, with star notes, are on the Series and Production page.
Sources: USPaperMoney.info, $2 note serial tables (print months, districts, signatures) · BEP, $2 Note · BEP, March 2025 report (PDF) · BEP, September 2025 report (PDF) · BEP, December 2025 report (PDF) · Coin World, Series 2017A runs · BEP, Serial Numbers · Fort Worth: production began December 1990, dedicated April 26, 1991, per BEP history and uscurrency.gov