Question about US money..., page 1

Throughout my childhood, my family (and I mean everyone in my family, uncles, aunts, grandparents, parents, the older cousins, etc) had a tradition of giving me US Silver Certificate $1, $2, and $5 bills for my birthday, Christmas, and Easter. These are not Federal Reserve notes, but rather are US Treasury notes and supposedly guarantee that the face amount of silver is payable to the bearer on demand.

I have several questions about these.

1. Is this still legally binding that the treasury would have to provide the face value in silver to the bearer on demand?

2. I notice that the Treasury's website actually talks down about these notes: www.treasury.gov...

United States notes serve no function that is not already adequately served by Federal Reserve notes. As a result, the Treasury Department stopped issuing United States notes, and none have been placed into circulation since January 21, 1971.

I found that interesting and almost the equivalent of that ridiculous "The FDA has found no evidence that there is any difference between milk from cows treated with BGH and those not treated" caveat that is forced onto cartons of organic milk. Kind of like the Fed demanded some sort of further public back patting be done by the treasury. Could this be a very large neon sign indicating that US notes are a grave threat to the Fed because it represents a niche of money, albeit a small one, which the Fed doesn't maintain a stranglehold of control over?

3. Are these more valuable as a collectible, or were enough of them printed that their only value lies in either the worth of silver or as a legally tenderable note (depending on what the value of silver is doing at the moment)? I've spent a lot of years collecting baseball cards and know the market very well, but I've never paid much attention to the collectible money market, so some light shed on that would be great.