BY JOHN HOPKINS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[$20 bill]](/editions/1998/09/24/twenty_200x134.jpg)
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FAMILIAR FACE, BUT...
President Jackson's face lift comes almost a year after the government introduced the new $50 Ulysses S. Grant. Brand new $100 Ben Franklins made their debut in 1996. Eventually, the $10, $5 and $1 will be redesigned.
The Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve issued the redesigned note with new and modified security features to deter counterfeiting. Last year, $45,000 in fake notes were passed and $13,000 seized in the 13 counties in Southwestern Ohio and Northern Kentucky.
Over the years, the $20 bill has been the most commonly counterfeited bill in the United States. The new note includes new and modified security features.
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Andrew Jackson never looked better -- or bigger -- than he will today in West Chester.
The new $20 bill, featuring a larger portrait of President Jackson, will be issued today, though it may be weeks before most Americans see the notes spitting out of ATM machines.
One of the first $20 bills to enter circulation in the Tristate will be spent at 10 a.m. at a Wal Mart at 7975 Tylersville Road.
Don't bother to save the first prints, said Jim Carr of Cincinnati Coin. "Everybody saves the first issues. They generally turn out to be worth very little down the road."
As for the old, retired $20 bills, "you're possibly looking at 48 years or more before (they) would be worth anything more than face value," he said.
The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve say the new bills will be harder to counterfeit -- $20s are the most popular target. But local police usually don't get involved unless it's the most basic form of counterfeiting -- like cutting the corners off $20s and putting them on $1s, said Sgt. Jerry Johnson of the Cincinnati police division's fraud squad. Anything more sophisticated goes to the Secret Service.
![[$20 bill]](/editions/1998/09/24/twenty_600x403.jpg)