I'll bet the bank teller asked you some questions when you went to deposit that amount in cash. With the new post-9/11 banking laws, they have to report large cash deposits.
The rule requiring the reporting of over $10K has been around since about 1980, possibly a little earlier. As an airline station manager in a small station, my father made a daily trip to the bank to make a deposit. Being in a military town, and the military was paid in cash for many years, and few had credit cards, the airline took in lots of cash. Suddenly one day Dad made a deposit and the teller pulled out a form and started asking questions. Turns out a new rule had gone into effect that required the form to be filled out on $10K+ deposits.
Sometime before Dad retired in '84 the company finally quit being so cheap and contracted with an armored car company to handle the deposits. This was also about the time that credit cards became more common, and somewhere in there the Army started paying with checks, and soldiers got checking accounts and started writing checks for airline tickets. Nowdays, if you go to purchase an airline ticket with cash, they look at you funny. In Atlanta, the ticket counter has a secure room that handles all of the cash. If a ticket agent takes payment in cash, he puts the money and paperwork in a pneumatic tube and sends it to the room, they send back whatever change he needs and thus no cash stays on the ticket counter and no one has to count cash drawers.
You need to keep one of those bill checking markers on hand if you plan on taking cash, there is too much counterfit stuff floating around.
Charles
