most elegant way of escaping $ in java

I have a base String "abc def", I am trying to replace my base string with "abc$ def$" using replaceFirst() method, which is running into errors as $ is not escaped.

I tried doing it with Pattern and Matcher APIs, as given below,

newValue = "abc$ def$";

if(newValue.contains("$")){

Pattern specialCharacters = Pattern.compile("$");

Matcher newMatcherValue = specialCharacters.matcher(newValue) ;

newValue = newMatcherValue.replaceAll("\\$") ;

}

This runs into error. Is there any elegant way of replacing my second string "abc$ def$" with "abc\\$ def\\$".so as to use the replacefirst() API successfully.

Thanks in Advance.