Why does the government issue different designs on dollar bills?

United States
October 5, 2008 1:04am CST
I was looking at some cash the other day and was surprised to see how different some of the bills looked from the others. I'm not just talking about their value - I mean the design. I have always known that there are different versions of bills, I guess I was just surprised to see how many there were. But why do they do this? The only reason I came up with was to prevent counterfeiting. Thus making a crisp, fresh bill with an older design looking fishy. But I don't think they change the design often enough to make this effective. Smart counterfeiters would just use the new design or somehow make their fake bills look aged. Then again, I could just be crazy. Anybody know?
1 person likes this
1 response
moneyandgc
@moneyandgc (3428)
• United States
5 Oct 08
Yes, counterfeiting is the main reason the government keeps changing the design of the money. It is not so much that they want to keep changing it, it is that they want to make it harder to reproduce. So they update it with measures to make it more difficult to do. They add watermarks and different materials embedded in the bills. This is so the counterfeiters can't simply print them. Making the bills look aged wouldn't help if they were missing key components.