LMHS wrote:
I have found this thread very interesting and enlightening. I think banking laws have changed a lot since some have bought/sold. I know they have since I last needed a large amount of actual cash ($10K and up is a large amount, under $10K and that is able to be acquired given a few weeks). I think I might want to look into the escrow/title thing to get a bit more info.
My daughter and I look at online ads for RVs that are for sale in a 500 mile radius from us. She has asked about the "Cash" payment request. I have told her I assume that the seller means they won't finance the purchase, not that actual folding paper is required.
Since we both use the same online bank (Schwab), any purchase would have to be either a personal check or an online transfer. Our bank does not have an actual building in any state. We get actual cash from the registers at Walmart ($100 per transaction). Takes a while to come up with a substantial amount of cash. Nowadays, it takes minutes for a check to clear. Before I bought an expensive item like a vehicle, I would contact my bank to see how they would suggest I handle the payment. Except when the site is undergoing maintenance, I can transfer account to account, within my bank, in less than 5 minutes. I have transferred from my bank account to another "outside" bank account in the same business day or on the next business day.
My daughter paid actual cash for both her truck ($3400) and the truck camper (under $2K). They were priced pretty low so cash wasn't an issue.
My bus shell was paid for with cash (I had $2K all in $20s, banded in packs of $100 with two packs of $50 in $5's and $10s so we could dicker the price down). My Jeep was bought thru an auto auction. As private buyers, we had to pay cash. Only registered dealers could pay with a check. I went with $10K in a backpack. I paid $6000 + $600 for my Jeep (in 1998). A year before, I had the same amount in my backpack and picked up a mini van for $500 but I didn't like driving the van so I sold it for $500 and got the Jeep. I still have and drive the Jeep. At the time we banked with Bank of America. The branch my husband dealt with mostly was in a small town with many wealthy out-of-state customers. It took a while to remove the $10K from the bank in cash because they flat out told my husband that they only paid out "small" lumps of cash. They simply didn't keep large amounts of cash on hand. Even large banks don't keep lot of cash on hand. Their insurance doesn't allow them to keep over a percentage of their normal operating cash.
When my father would get paid in actual cash, he always had problems depositing it. This was for extensive and expensive tile jobs in multi-million dollar houses (like I said, "wealthy out-of-state") that were built, never lived in and sold for a profit (aka "money laundering"). We are pretty sure that he was being paid with drug money. Once he was paid all in $1K bills. The $1K bills looked new, looked fake, felt fake but his bank said they were good. And that bank was not terribly comfortable taking in all that cash. They had to sit on it until the armored truck outfit showed up on schedule to take it away. No one wanted $1K bills. Too hard to move around in the economy. $100 and smaller is better and more spendable.
As for the long-gone OP, it sounds like he is hiding assets from a divorce. It sounded off and I would have assumed it was a scam.
$1000.00 bills are worth more than the face value, often many time more. Taking them to a bank to deposit instead of an expert in numismatics is potentially throwing away a massive amount of money.
