A $1,000 is also known a G (for Grand), popularized by rappers like Tupac as in the lyric:
"I made a G-today...but you made it in a sleazy way, selling crack to the kids,
Hey I gotta get paid, that's just the way it is.
Grover Cleveland was on the thousand dollar bill when it was in circulation.
Posted by Joey Denaro at November 30, 2004 03:50 PM The term "bit" harks back to the Spanish piece-of-eight, which was common currency in the New World prior to the minting and printing of the earliest money in the fledgling America. It was scored, pie-fashion, and could be broken into sections as needed. "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar..."
Also, this site includes monetary slang of 19th-Century England in its glossary....
Thanks for the site; I fixed your comment so the link works. Just FYI, you can't put a link between angle brackets -- it simply vanishes. You have to either put [a href="link"]...[/a] between angle brackets (instead of the square brackets I used here), adding /a after the word(s) you want linked, or just give the link plain:
http://tlucretius.net/Sophie/Castle/victorian_slang.html