equal to 40 US cents in 2015 --WP
The notes also became a target of investment scams similar to those affecting the Iraqi dinar, where promoters falsely claimed that the notes would be “revalued” (deflated) to a profitable exchange rate,[15] and counterfeits that capitalised on the note’s high collectable value.[16]
Well, well.
I gave these to people for Christmas one year and my dad ranted about the liberals doing that to our money.
He should be happy that Donnie is gonna do it instead.
I always kinda wanted to order a bunch of these things from eBay, and play Monopoly with real devalued currency, just for the hell of it.
Unironically worth 100x it’s actual value as a novelty.
Wow! I remember spending 5 million Turkish dollars in the late 90s to buy anything and that felt weird. But this is mind boggling.
I remember having a German post stamp from 1922/23 somewhere with 1 billion Mark printed on it. When I was a child, the porto for a letter was 1 DM and these numbers appeared surreal to me.
I can’t wait to see the US one hundred trillion dollar notes!
Oh wow I only have a billion dollar note in my possession, which I bought for 50p at an antique shop years ago. I like to flash it and say I’m a billionaire, but I could be a trillionaire!
Step 1: Exchange your last paycheque for Zimbabwean dollars
Step 2: Go to a bank in Zimbabwe and withdraw the whole amount in the smallest paper denomination they have
Step 3: Become the world’s foremost paper baron 😎
Ok, I know it’s a joke, so I am not shitting on your joke, but for anyone interested in the way this actually works irl…
- These notes are not in production anymore.
- if you could go back in time, this wouldn’t work as it was the law at the time that the maximum amount of money you could withdraw in a day was 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, or 10 of these I think, memory is flakey on the last point.
- the banks received their stock of notes every morning, and had run out of their assigned currency by 10am on most days.
- the guys who were paid in foreign currency equivalents created a really funky overflow bug in the banking system, and some banks opened 10 cheque accounts for customers because the database couldn’t handle a number that large
- there used to be cash laying on the floor outside on the streets because the money was so devalued
- most parts of the economy ditched the zim dollar, and traded in US dollars, so the zim dollar was basically ignored as acceptable tender at most retail stores
- most notes had a 3 or 6 month expiry printed on it, and no bank stocked any of the smaller denomination notes anyway. So smaller denominations would go out of print in months, and banks wouldn’t order stock of them anyway.
- these were such cool novelty gifts, that locals started collecting them and selling them to tourists for 5 to 10 USD per note despite being valued at around 1 USD each.
There is a real shortage of these notes, with some mint production notes being purchased by collectors for a few hundred to a few thousand USD making this a hell of a return on investment. Basically, a 100 dollars worth of purchase of these notes went for over 10k USD, which is 100x ROI over 11 years or so, which is almost as much as your bank charges you in fees… :D you could do better as these were often times just thrown away for nothing
Probably wrong here, but that would make it the record holder for the worst performing currency, and the number 1 performing currency investment.
I tried buying a few notes in every denomination I could find when I went to Zim. I have a bunch of these. Think I paid 5 USD for the entire bundle of notes I came home with.
The price money for the Ig Noble price is 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollar
Looks worthless
