Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Has Been Using His Own Custom $2 Bills for Over 30 Years

NEED TO KNOW

• Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been using his own custom $2 bills for over 30 years

• Wozniak, 75, spoke about his quirky legal tender in a 2011 interview with Engadget

• The tech entrepreneur legally purchases bills from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and takes them to a print shop

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been using his own custom $2 bills in a bit that he says spans decades.

Wozniak, 75, spoke about his quirky legal tender in a recently resurfaced 2011 interview with Engadget, during which he brought a pad of his custom bills on stage to show the audience.

“I got a printer in my hometown of Los Gatos, Calif., to make these pads for me,” he shared at the time. “I got them the supplies from a higher-quality printer, and they’re perforated so you can tear them off like Green Stamps.”

A close-up of the bills showed that they weren’t your average $2 bill, which features Thomas Jefferson and is made from cotton and linen. Instead, they’re stamped with his name, “WOZ.”

Engadget/YouTube

Steve Wozniak with his $2 bill sheets on The Engadget Show.

“I don’t know if it’s the right president. The serial numbers are very suspicious, but you can still smell the ink. So don’t touch it because it’s a little wet,” Wozniak quipped in the old clip.

Wozniak doesn’t print these bills himself, as that would be illegal and is a federal crime. The tech co-founder instead orders real, uncut sheets of bills from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and then works with the California print shop to bind them into pads. He then adds perforations so the bills can be easily torn from the sheet.

“They meet the specs of the U.S. government. So by law, these are legal tender, I have been spending them,” he told Engadget, adding, “You can get arrested for them, you cannot get convicted because you’re in the right.”

In an archived post on his website, per Snopes, Wozniak once wrote that the bills are “just for comedy,” and opened up about buying them from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which sells uncut currency sheets.

“You can purchase $1, $2, and now $5 bills from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving on sheets,” he explained in a blog post, according to the outlet. “The sheets come in sizes of four, 16, and 32 bills each.”

“I buy such sheets of $2 bills. I carry large sheets, folded in my pocket, and sometimes pull out scissors and cut a few off to pay for something in a store. It’s just for comedy, as the $2 bills cost nearly $3 each when purchased on sheets.”

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According to Wozniak, he once nearly got in trouble with the Secret Service — and upon questioning, the former Apple engineer responded with another prank document, handing over an ID he made on his dye sublimation printer, which very few other people had at the time.

Andreas Rentz/Getty

Wozniak in 2022.

Wozniak added that he was wearing an eyepatch in the ID photo, but noted that, like the $2 bills, “it was not illegal” since the ID, which stated he was a “laser safety officer” in the “Department of Defiance,” was clearly a “joke.”

Still, he claimed the Secret Service approved his $2 bills “three times,” and despite his encounters with law enforcement, it hasn’t stopped him from using the custom bills while out and about.

While some places, such as an In-N-Out Burger in California, haven’t accepted the money, he noted that plenty of the bills have passed hands over the years.

“A lot of them are [in circulation],” he said in the 2011 interview. “They’ve been in circulation for 20 years as I’ve been spending them in Los Gatos.”

Wozniak, who co-founded Apple in 1976 alongside Steve Jobs, also revealed that he has sold the sheets of bills to friends, charging $5 for four $2 bills.

“I tell you,” he joked. “What you’re getting is worth $50 — you’d be an idiot not to buy it for five bucks.”

Read the original article on People