Question 16 of the Statement of Financial Affairs asks people filing bankruptcy to provide a "Description and value of any property transferred" for the purposes of filing bankruptcy.  Below is our description of money: 

Debtor paid their filing fee with fifteen non-sequential twenty dollar bills and one ten dollar bill.

To a money collector the bills are either Grade 4 or 6 which is described as:  "The note is very worn with serious splits, fraying of the margins and damage." or "A very heavily circulated note with numerous problems. It is totally limp with impaired visual appeal. Notes in this grade are commonly seen with pieces missing."  While determining the grading for these bills it is unlikely that they would be purchased for more than their face value.  My father always quoted Gersham’s law lamenting the loss of silver coins, “bad money drives out good money.”  If these bills were to have value above their face value they would be pulled from circulation.  

Serial Numbers for the bills.  

Ten Dollar Bill: JF34201004B

Twenty Dollar Bills: ML08946484A, JG06104363C, EG94983868D, ML24992730C, JJ34518256B, JL70850855C, JJ34518256B, ML24992730C, EG94983868D, JG06104363C, ML08946484A, JJ53270842A, JL63848819C, IA57805648C, IK24541818D

We have not checked these serial numbers on websites like, wheresgeorge.com but it is likely that they have not been registered given the enormous number of bills in circulation.

The Ten Dollar Bill has the likeness of Alexander Hamilton on it. Alexander Hamilton said, “Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.”  Alexander Hamilton is also known for being killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.  The SNL digital short, “Lazy Sunday” has the lyric, “You can call us Aaron Burr cause the way we’re droppin Hamiltons.”  As with most jokes about tragic deaths some people would still say, “too soon.”  

Currently the $10 dollar bill is rumored to be in the process of a redesign. “Last week, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced plans for a redesign of the $10 bill, marking the first time in more than a century that a woman will be featured on a U.S. bill. The newly designed $10 bill will be issued by 2020—in time for the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment.”  Some people are saying these plans have stalled because of the popular musical “Hamilton” by  Lin-Manuel Miranda.  Time will tell.  Regardless the ten dollar bill used to pay for this bankruptcy filing fee did not have the image of a woman on it.  Just the image of a man who lived during a time that women were not allowed to vote.

The Twenty Dollar Bills have the likeness of Andrew Jackson on them.  Andrew Jackson is known for forcing the Cherokee to walk the trail of tears.  There have been numerous calls to have Andrew Jackson removed from the twenty dollar bill.

One such call stated,  “Jackson’s work to increase the political power and wealth of lower-class white men at the expense of people of color and women is not worthy of celebration or reverence in a post-Fourteenth Amendment America. In particular, his efforts to bring the “West” into the nation involved policies predicated on the eradication of an entire people (my people) because we occupied the land he sought to make available to Greenberg’s “[white] men of all classes.” - Mary Kathryn Nagle

Conspiracy theorists believe that 9/11 was a plot of the government and one of their proofs is that the ten and twenty dollar bills if folded correctly create images of the twin towers burning.  

There are many ways you could origami a bill to suit your needs but this proof seems like a paper tiger at best.

There are many other notable features of the ten and twenty dollar bills but it seems superfluous to discuss all of them because these bills were promptly deposited into The Bankruptcy Firm’s US Bank trust account where they became non-physical or digital one might say.  The existence and value of money when viewed this way quickly becomes abstract and seemingly valueless.  What value to these bills represent?  Is money merely a social construct that we all agree to?  

To quote the Daily Show about our money markets, “Money is just a consensual mass delusion based on fictitious valuing of abstract assets.”  Who determines what fifteen twenties and a ten dollar bill are actually worth.  Is the only value the power to transfer said money with a magnetic stripe? Luckily we don’t need to ask these questions as the Bankruptcy Court recognizes this transfer of digital money and processes it thusly:  $235 towards filing fee and $75 towards an administrative fee. (A quick shout out here to the clerks of the court processing this paperwork!  We appreciate your time and sense of humor!)

This filing fee is then transformed into Federal Bankruptcy Court protection as the automatic stay goes into place.  Thus halting thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in collections against the Debtor.  And you can’t really put a price on that.