An elderly woman walked into the American Saving Bank in Munster, Indiana recently to make a deposit, a $2000  deposit that consisted of two 1934 $1000 Federal Reserve Notes.

Reports said that the woman, who was not identified for security purposes, arrived at the bank Wednesday morning and stepped to a teller window to make a $2,000 deposit. When bank workers saw the two bills, they weren’t sure what to make of them.

Bank teller who handled the deposit, Mary Ann Vlasich, thought to herself, “She’s going to need more bills because there is not nearly enough here for $2,000″, who believed the bills were hundreds.

When she looked closer, Vlasich was shocked to see they were $1,000 bills — a  denomination that no one at the bank had ever seen before, much less handled.

The deposit was accepted and the woman left the bank.

But soon afterward the transaction was brought to the attention of Michael Mellon, American Savings Bank’s president and chief executive officer.

“I’ve seen $500s before, but thousands, especially in this good of a condition, are just really rare. Everyone wanted to take a look at them,” Mellon said.

Realizing that the crisp 1934 bills were worth far more than their $1,000 face value, the bank called the woman and asked her to come down to the bank and pick up the banknotes. As Mellon recounts ….

“We explained it would be to the best interest of everybody if the customer picked up the bills and sold them to get a higher return,” he said. “We are a community bank that really looks out for our customers.”

When the woman came back to the bank she told Mellon the bills came from a relative a long time ago. Asked  what possessed her to bring them into the bank Wednesday she replied ” I have no idea”!