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Itâs a hoax. Geraldo Rivera will do anything to redeem himself.
(If you donât know what Iâm talking aboutâŚget off my lawn!)
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Smells like viral marketing to me.
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Some may date to the '50s or '60s, if that makes you feel less old?
(The $5 and $2 bills that can be seen are United States Notes, as opposed to the rest which are Federal Reserve Notes. Printing of US Notes ceased at some point in the late '60s and they werenât issued after 1971. From what I recall they canât be any older than the early '50s though, as the red seal was on the left side prior to the redesign that occurred in that decade. The presence of those notes is actually the only thing that tempers my belief that this is just viral marketing, but Iâm still not convinced it isnât.)
The Bingo card is from a 1933 Milton Bradley game set.
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Ah the 90âs! The plaid shirts! The straightened hair!
Nostalgia wave.
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Iâve no doubt you could spend them at face value. The question is are the bills old enough that they have greater value as a collectable.
Iâve read enough Reddit to know that this is almost definitely bullshit.
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I wonder if someone who knows a lot about fonts could look at that Arizona card. If you could positively identify the font and it was post-1960, youâd know it was likely a fake.
I also wonder about the census data on the card. The Arizona population is taken from the 1960 census - I donât know how long they took to compile and release the data, but it seems like itâd take a while before you had flash cards in general circulation with the latest data on it. I donât know how quickly liquor would go from being taxed to sold back then - if the bourbon was taxed in 1960, when would it likely be sold?
Iâd be more convinced if the flash card had the data from the 1950 census on it. It doesnât seem to me like youâd use a flashcard as a bookmark until youâd had it for a while and didnât really care about it any more.
I am enjoying the plethora of plaid shirts and shorts and doc martens on campus these days.
Also the hats. But for some reason all the hats are of the âboy georgeâ variety, which is so not 90s⌠but alas, kids these days!
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Bourbonâs only a fad? Oh man, Iâll let my granddad know he should stop buying the Old Crow heâs enjoyed since he was in his 20s. Just a fad we youngâuns came up with, gramps, you hipster wannabe.
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Probably not, especially given that many of the notes appear to be well worn and those that are visible look to have been issued at a date no earlier than 1963.*
* Iâm basing this off of the lack of the âWill Pay to the Bearer on Demandâ text below Franklinâs portrait, as well the fact that the obligation text appears to be only 2 lines on all the Federal Reserve Notes. Both of those changes occurred in 1963. Unfortunately further changes to the obverse between 1963 and the 1996 redesign were so minute that theyâre unlikely to be visible in the resolution available.
Itâs like the Reddit Safe fiasco, except there was an actual payoff other than cobwebs.
Heâs no wannabe, heâs a real hipster - he was drinking bourbon before it was cool
seriously, though, every fad runs over people who were into X before it became a fad. From mutton chops to swing music to bourbon. This frequently pisses off the pre-fad people
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Or amuses.
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Since they appear to be quite âcrispâ, they might be worth a bit more in the collector market, however, I seem to recall that bills were rarely worth much moreâŚ
after reading the source yeah this kinda screams marketing or ARG kind of thing.
I am 100% sure this is marketing by the bourbon company. I am not 100% sure BoingBoingâs in on it. 1960 bottle from a company that ceased production in 1958? http://www.jamesepepper.com/history.php
See the bourbon companyâs company statement to AZ Republic at the bottom here. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/best-reads/2015/08/28/phoenix-couple-50-thousand-bourbon-safe-james-e-pepper/71286034/
It seems like itâll turn into a viral scavenger hunt because of the other âclues.â Or maybe a bingo game.
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If itâs actually viral marketing then theyâre doing a pretty awful job.
From that very page, the â1958â part of the timeline:
Iâm not sure how tax stamps work⌠At what point does the tax stamp go on there? Itâs a 1960 tax stamp, but aged 6 years, does that mean it was produced in 1954?
But yeah, reading the companyâs comment in that linked article (after I went through the stupid quiz to read it), sounds pretty clear that this is a viral marketing stunt. Relaunching the brand, perhaps?
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