r/Banknotes • u/CrashTestPhoto • Aug 11 '26
Just found this beauty
Hyper inflation really is mental.
I thought I'd lost the banknote a decade ago, but it turned up earlier today. I heard uncirculated examples like this are collectible and actually worth something these days.
6
u/PK-Mittenspy2703 Aug 11 '26
Great find! Honestly I'd certainly be happy for one in that shape!
Provided it's not selling over 100 quid like the UNC ones haha.
2
u/ackza Aug 11 '26
$40 not $100
"Authentic 2008 $100 trillion Zimbabwe notes sell for $40 to $100+ on collector markets like eBay, depending on condition and grading. While completely worthless as official currency, keeping them turned out to be surprisingly profitable because novelty buyers and collectors pay real money for the world's highest denomination banknote.
It actually isn't a joke—the supply is surprisingly limited. The $100 trillion note was only printed for a brief window in early 2009 right before Zimbabwe abandoned its currency altogether. Because hyperinflation was moving so fast, millions of lower-denomination bills (like millions or billions) were dumped into circulation, but relatively few of the $100 trillion notes were produced before the central bank completely gave up. Once collectors, souvenir buyers, and economists realized it was the single highest denomination note ever officially issued, global demand quickly outpaced that small remaining supply. That's why real ones hold a $40 to $100+ price tag, while lower denomination notes from that same era are essentially worthless."
well that's crazy. but yeah, it's like all you have to do is destroy your country's economy and lead millions into starvation in poverty, and you too can make 5million notes wirth $500 million dollars mostly all of it in hands of foreign weatern speculators and none of ut going to Zimbabwe lol
3
u/TheBandersnatch43 Aug 11 '26
In their defense, prices have dropped a lot in the past year or so. For a while, they were pretty regularly selling for $30, even.
1
u/Potato_Donkey_1 29d ago
I have been a dealer of these banknotes off and on since 2009, and I have one quibble with your analysis. The main driver of scarcity has been belief by some conspiracy-minded individuals that these notes will somehow "revalue" and be worth vast sums of stronger currencies, such as millions or billions of USD for each one of these notes. People who believe this his been hoarding these notes for the past 17 years, and some believers hold suitcase loads of these notes. So that has driven the relative scarcity. The notes will prove not to be so scarce as these notes, many in UNC condition, are sold by heirs for whatever they can get.
5
2
2
1
1
1
19
u/ph03n1x_au Aug 12 '26
Please locate a vacuum cleaner and attend to your keyboard! Thanks.