You may, for obvious reasons, not find the 'original' typefaces used for the dollar bill, but 'Federal', by LettError, may be a marvellous alternate..

( There were quite a few related threads, on Typophile, in the past.. Maybe I am able to dig up some of them.. Till then.: Another alternate may be 'Revenue', by Joffre LeFevre / Aboutype.. )

Thanks. I know the Federal. Great font! But unfortunately we dont have the $300 in our budget...

I don't think that the lettering on the one dollar bill is type. I think that it is all hand-lettered, that is, invented by the engravers. Maybe they looked at some printed specimens to get the letter proportions right, but I don't think that it is based off of any font.

Federal is the only thing available that matches the effect. But a lot of fonts have the same letter-style (without the 3D or hatched effects). Would one of these be ok?

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www.typeoff.de

This has an engraved version not a match but similar and half the price. Alternatively you could try this and work it over with Illustrator for a cheaper method.
Tim

Just FYI, scanning US money is (generally) illegal.
Publishing the images even more so.

hhp

Hrant,

True. And in Photoshop CS you can't even open images of certain banknotes (article). Adobe seems to have removed the restriction from Photoshop CS2, but you might run into problems trying print them out.

Woodcut isn't exact, but is free and would look close to the untrained eye.

Barrelhouse is kind of grungy, but its letterforms are close if you remove the shadow and again, it's free.

Escorial is a nice alternative in the same vein as Engravers.

A nice Caslon Black might also work.

- Lex