What is special about a silver certificate dollar bill?

Answer 1

Assuming the series date is 1935 or 1957, not much is special except that the bill represents a form of currency no longer issued by the Treasury. Nearly all of them have blue seals and serial numbers so they stand out versus today's universally green-seal bills.

Most bills with those dates were printed in huge numbers. Even today they don't sell for much more than a couple of dollars. There are some exceptions, though, like the special yellow- or brown-seal bills printed during WWII.

Silver certificates were backed 1-for-1 with silver metal on deposit with the government. Up till the early 1960s the price of silver was tightly controlled, and it was possible to exchange a certificate for the same dollar amount of silver.

When demand for silver skyrocketed the government could no longer control supply and demand. The price was deregulated and the Treasury sold off its silver stocks. To prevent speculation and manipulation of the silver certificates in circulation, the Treasury discontinued redemption for silver metal.

In 1963 the Treasury began printing $1 bills as Federal Reserve Notes, although some silver certificate production continued as late as 1965.