In a story lifted straight from the Simpsons playbook, a US$10,000 bill issued by the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1934 has recently been auctioned for a whopping US$480,000 to a private collector.

The Depression-era bill, issued in Boston and sold at Dallas-based auction house, Heritage Auctions last Friday, was certified by Paper Money Guaranty (PMG) and was Exceptional Paper Quality (EPQ) graded.

Vice President of Currency at Heritage Auctions, Dustin Johnston, wasn’t surprised that the US$10,000 bill finished atop the Currency auction, which also featured a twenty-dollar coin from 1899 that sold for US$468,000. 

“Large-denomination notes always have drawn the interest of collectors of all levels,” Johnston said in a statement. 

While the US$10,000 bill in question was never circulated publicly, the Fed did print and circulate currency notes in denominations of US$500 or higher up until 1969. 

In fact, the US$10,000 bill featuring the portrait of President Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was the highest denomination US currency ever to publicly circulate. 

A US$100,000 bill featuring the portrait of Woodrow Wilson was also issued in 1934, but its purpose was to transfer funds between Federal Reserve Banks, and not to pass in retail transactions. 

Currency notes in denominations of US$500 or higher stopped being printed in 1945 and were discontinued completely in 1969 due to lack of use. 

The story seems to mirror a much-beloved episode of the Simpsons’ fictitious US$1 trillion dollar bill that Montgomery Burns was given by President Harry S. Truman in 1945 after the U.S. government enlisted him to help reconstruct post-war Western Europe. 

In a case of fiction meeting reality, it seems the Simpsons creators, once again, knew what they were talking about.