1934 $10 Bill Value

Series 1934 (no letter) was printed with two seal colors. The early notes have a pale, almost mint green seal that collectors call the light green seal (Friedberg 2004). Later printings switched to the darker green used on every series after it (Fr. 2005). Hold your note next to a modern bill: if the seal looks washed out and bright rather than dark, you probably have the light seal.

That one difference is worth real money at the top grades. Greysheet lists a Philadelphia light seal note at up to $2,000 against $225 for the dark seal from the same district. In circulated grades both sit near the $11 floor, so the shade only matters if the paper is still crisp.

If your note has a letter after 1934, the seal is dark and the letter is what you look up. The table below is the Greysheet CPG retail range for each variety. The low number is a worn note; the high number is a top-grade uncirculated one.

The black seal on the left carries a letter from A (Boston) to L (San Francisco), and the same letter starts the serial number. On most 1934 $10 varieties the district barely matters in circulated grades. It starts to matter on gem notes, where the scarcer districts have far higher top prices.

For Series 1934 light seal notes, Greysheet's top values vary from $500 for Dallas and San Francisco to $800 for Chicago, $900 for Minneapolis, and $2,000 for Philadelphia. For 1934D the outliers are Dallas, St. Louis, and Atlanta. If you are not sure which city your letter stands for, the Federal Reserve district letter guide has the full list.

Do not read too much into this if your note is folded. A worn Philadelphia light seal is still an $11 to $20 note. The district premium is a condition premium in disguise.

A star at the end of the serial number marks a replacement note, printed to stand in for a sheet that was spoiled during production. Stars from the 1930s survive in much smaller numbers than regular notes, and the prices show it.

Greysheet prices a 1934 New York dark seal star from $350 to $1,400, with MS65 at $525 and MS66 at $1,750. A 1934B New York star is listed at $525 in AU55 and $900 in MS64. Most other district stars have no published price at all, which in practice means they trade rarely enough that each sale sets its own number.

If you have a 1934 $10 with a star, do not spend it, clean it, or flatten it. Read our star note guide for how replacement notes work, then get it in front of a dealer or a grading service.

During World War II the government overprinted 1934A $10 Federal Reserve Notes from San Francisco with HAWAII on the front and back, and printed the seal and serial in brown. If the islands had been invaded, those notes could be declared worthless. They look like the note in the photo above, but with a brown seal and the word HAWAII. Our Hawaii brown seal guide covers them.

The other one is the North Africa note: a $10 with a yellow seal. It is a Silver Certificate, not a Federal Reserve Note, and it says so across the top. Greysheet lists the Series 1934 North Africa $10 (Fr. 2308) at $900 to $30,000 and the 1934A (Fr. 2309) at $38 to $3,500. See the North Africa yellow seal page if yours has a yellow seal.

A blue seal 1934 $10 is a Silver Certificate too, again a different note with its own pricing.

Look at the small text to the left of the portrait. Series 1934 tens say the note is legal tender and redeemable in lawful money at the Treasury or any Federal Reserve Bank. The 1928 tens before them promised redemption in gold. Dropping that gold clause is the fastest way to tell a 1934 from a 1928 at a glance (Wikipedia's history of the ten covers the change).

The serial numbers and the Treasury seal are green on every 1934 Federal Reserve Note, light or dark. Blue means Silver Certificate, yellow means North Africa, brown means Hawaii.

Every small size Federal Reserve Note carries the district as a number as well as a letter. On a 1934 ten the number appears four times on the face, near each corner of the design, and it always matches the seal: 1 for A (Boston), 2 for B (New York), and so on to 12 for L (San Francisco). The photo above shows a Boston note with 1 printed at both sides.

The other small marks are a check letter and a plate number. They tell the Bureau which plate and which position on the sheet printed the note. For value they rarely matter on this series, so do not let a seller talk them up. The series line, the seal shade, the district and the star are what the market pays for.

A circulated 1934A or 1934C is not worth a trip to a coin shop on its own. Dealers buy them in bundles and price them close to the $11 floor. Keep it as a curiosity, or sell it with other old notes in one lot.

A crisp note with no folds, a light green seal, a 1934B, or any star is different. Those are worth having graded, because the gap between a raw note and a PMG or PCGS holder at 64 or above is larger than the fee. Our guide on where to sell old paper money compares auction houses, dealers, and eBay for notes in that range.