You can call it a C-note, a Benjamin, a Franklin, or a Ben, but no matter what nickname you give it, a 100-dollar bill is ...

Take a dollar bill out of your wallet ... but 00000002 to 00000100 are considered valuable. "Ladders": A sequential serial number, like 12345678 or 32109876. Palindromes: Say, 45288254 or 02100120.

A puzzling surge in the number of $100 bills in circulation and the planned ... by 2017 the C-note had eclipsed the dollar bill to become the most widely distributed U.S. currency.