How to ruin a banknote.

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I was at this museum that had a bunch of old hand notary seal embossers you could try. But I couldn't find any paper to try it out on so I grabbed fairly new $5  and a Canadian Tire note in my wallet. I pressed real hard and it left a real deep embossing mark on the bill. You'd never be able to get that out. So if you want to turn in some banknotes that you don't want anybody to collect after you, you could just emboss them all. Silly idea, but it would work.

If you wanted to dispose of some banknotes by depositing them in a bank, why would you want to deliberately foil another potential collector by spoiling them in such a way?   

Because that's happened to me, there were many times a bank teller had older notes for me, UNC, in sequential order only to find they had deep creases put on the corners and center of the bills in different places. The creases were deep, like somebody folded, then ran their fingernail along to crease to make it deep and permanent. Anyway, I think I'm just about the only collector in my town, so I don't think too many other are interested.

I don’t see why you would ever want to do that?

It shows big disrespect to your fellow collectors

I won't be ruining bills, I just wanted to see what would happen if I used a seal embosser on a note. I was just saying if you did that on a bill, it would never come out. It was an experiment. The bill I tried it on was a common note.

If you own something, it's yours to do whatever with it you want. Those who press notes to make them look better (although they rarely do, for most collectors) are merely exercising their right, as an owner. It's simply utopian to think all collectors are looking out for other collectors. It would be nice, but it ain't reality.

Also, however futile it might be, I think some collectors do this out of self-interest to reduce the supply of UNC notes and hopefully make their own notes more rare and valuable. 

For example, someone has 1,000 UNC 1986 $2 Birds notes, keeps 100 of them and spends/deposits  the other 900, but puts creases in them first.  Taking 900 UNC $2 Birds notes off the market might not put much of a dent in the supply of UNC notes available or the market price, but some collectors might be using this reasoning behind roughing up their UNC notes before spending them...

One persons effort to shorten the supply sounds daft to me.  They need a reality check regarding how many notes are issued and how few people collect!!  I do think most collectors would also see it as a sign of an unsavoury type of person