Freshly Minted

Have you visited the Bureau of Engraving and Printing facility in Fort Worth? You can go there and watch people make money.

Currently they are printing new $100 bills for prompt circulation. The C-Note has undergone a major makeover that includes a color-changing ink well, a 3-D security ribbon and more texture on Ben Franklin’s collar. I’m told it is a work of art.

At the Fort Worth Bureau of E&P, 32-bill sheets of money paper are printed, stamped with individual serial numbers and sliced into individual notes. The notes are sorted into piles 100 deep, banded together and eventually stacked into 4,000-note bricks worth $400,000. Those bricks will be shipped to Federal Reserve banks for distribution. Soon the bills will be in the hands of John Q. Public.

I must schedule a tour ASAP. It’s the only way I’ll ever see thirty-two $100 bills.