What is the origin of "stack" meaning $1000?

Question

I just read this lovely quote from MSN about an ex-girlfriend putting out a hit on her ex-boyfriend:

"I will pay somebody a stack to kill my baby father," Eley wrote in a post this spring, according to a police affidavit.
  
  (...)
  
  A "stack" is slang for $1,000.
  
  "Police: Target of Facebook hit fatally shot", NBC News

A "stack" apparently meant $1000 and as her quote didn't qualify the word at all, this was obviously slang she's used before.  This is the first time I've heard this.

Btw, for your entertainment, here was the response she got to her inquiry:

"Say no more ... what he look like ... where he be at ... need that stack 1st," Bynum wrote back, police said.

simchona · Accepted Answer

I think that stack goes back relatively far in its meaning of "a large quantity". From the book Slang and its analogues past and present written in 1903:

The entry provides the phrase "stacks of the ready" to mean "plenty of money". I think this phrase, in the prevailing years, was shortened to the slang stack, which also took on the meaning of $1000.

Although I am loathe to use this as a source, Urban Dictionary lists that:

one stack = 1 G

That is, one stack is equivalent to one grand which is $1000. The use of stack in this fashion is very much slang, so it is not in more established dictionaries. However, given that Urban Dictionary is a crowd-sourced source which sometimes contains the most current uses of words, and that this meaning of stack is entered twice, I am sure that a stack is equal to $1000.

What is the origin of "stack" meaning $1000?

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