Apollo 2 dollar bills

What is the story about the apollo 2 dollar bills. They are advertised as legit, but are they. If not how can they advertise

 them as legal tender?

Interesting! I had a look. 

It appears that some company has overprinted a regular 2 Dollar Bill, leaving one of the serial numbers visible, and got Buzz Aldrin to sign them!

A defaced note is still legal tender as far as I know, so long as the serial number is identifiable.

rmuniak

What is the story about the apollo 2 dollar bills. They are advertised as legit, but are they. If not how can they advertise

 

 them as legal tender?

This is a very grey area in US Law. Technically, the notes are not legal tender but, any prosecution would have to prove that there was intent to render the bill unusable. The read here is that before a note is considered to no longer be legal tender, it more or less needs to appear in  court and be proved to be maliciously defaced. The law also allows all business owners the right to refuse acceptance of these defaced notes which could make them unusable for daily transactions. Still, banks should accept such defaced notes and exchange for new ones and put the defaced notes in the damaged pile for future destruction. Now, if the denomination was altered in any form, then you have passed the grey area into black and white law where those notes are definitely considered to be illegally tampered with. The law is here in this code 18 U.S.C. 333.

For those interested in what this monstrosity looks like, here is the first:

Yours for only $9.98.  Of course you'll have to sign up to get the rest of the series at $46.98 per.

I really hope that collectors will avoid stamped notes such as these.

In Canada, we had the “Gold Maple Leaf” stamped on the run-of-the-mill Commemorative 1867-1967 $1 & unwitting targets were paying 3 or 4 X BV (about $12 to $15 at the time) for these. Although many collectors, including myself, sent warnings & write ups (when eBay had a forum) in a Guide to collecting Bank of Canada notes, most of these people had no idea they were buying a bad (defaced) note.  

A few years later, the Polar bear $2.00 reared its ugly head, and another successful scam ensued.   Once again, many collectors from the Canadian Paper Money Forum (CPMF) attempted to educate/steer new collectors away from such defaced notes.  The problem is that when people buy these inflated defaced notes it only encourages another bad apple to hatch another scam. 

There has always been a culture of messing with the commemorative $2 bill, starting back with its first issue in 1976.

'Adding value' with modding.

This ‘Apollo’ version is a particularly unattractive modification, imho.

rsirian1

For those interested in what this monstrosity looks like, here is the first:

 

Yours for only $9.98.  Of course you'll have to sign up to get the rest of the series at $46.98 per.

Actually, a lot nicer looking than our “Polar bear” (fortunately, can't find any on eBay to show off).

There's a ‘rest of the series’ ! Ugh.

Hibernia

There's a ‘rest of the series’ ! Ugh.

Oh yes. Not only that, there's many other themes.  Here's one:

Hey, we could do them on star notes and standard issue notes, and sell them as a pair - sell twice as many that way, to the converted.