Patent ID: 7185749

Claim:
A currency bill recycling machine having an input and output for receiving and dispensing currency bills; a transport system; a detection system to which bills are fed by the transport system from the input, the detection system that determines at least the fitness and authenticity of each bills, the fitness of a bill being determined as sufficient for recycling when the detection system determines that the bill can be reliably dispensed by the currency bill recycling machine, the fitness of the bill being determined as sufficient for recirculating but not recycling when the dispensing system determines that the bill is degraded such that the bill cannot be reliably dispensed by the currency bill recycling machine but can be further used in commerce, the fitness of the bill being determined as unfit when the detection system determines the bill is sufficiently degraded that the bill is unusable in commerce; and a recycling store, a recirculation store, and an unfit bill store to each of which bills are selectively fed by the transport system, the detection system being adapted to cause genuine bills of sufficient fitness for recycling to be fed to the recycling store, to cause genuine bills of sufficient fitness for recirculating but not recycling to be fed to the recirculation store, and to cause unfit bills to be fed to the unfit bill store, the transport system being operable to withdraw bills from the recycling store for dispensing via the output.