Paper Money: New Acquisitions

Very nice acquisitions @Troodon ! Great to see your elephant theme set grow.

I got this 1992 10 pa'anga as soon as I saw it become available on eBay. Really like the old style design of these Tonga notes (the back almost looks like an Eastern block note from Europe LoL):

-I rarely catch an UNC note on my travels & I can see that would be frustrating while visiting Guatemala. I got a half quetzal from that nation as I like the quetzal bird portrayed too:

Once I got the note in hand: it made me want to pick up some of the earlier versions but I have found the other, older varieties tough (& expensive) to track down. I really like the old Maya pyramids & architecture featured in some of the denominations. Maybe someday!

 

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I was very lucky on my last day of my trip in the Guatemala City airport to get really fresh 1 and 5 quetzal notes. I do have a 1/2 quetzal (50 centavo) note but these tend to get beat up pretty quickly (they look really nice if you can get a fresh one, but they're hard to find there. They circulate very heavily very quickly). I didn't think at the time of saving notes higher than 5 at the time (later thought better of that kind of thing lol, but at the time my habit was to save any banknote worth $5 US or less, or at least one of the smallest bill if all of them were worth over $5. Actually that should have included a 10 but I just didn't save one for some reason. Exchange rate at the time was 1 US dollar being worth a little over 7 quetzales, so even the 20 was worth less than $5 US.)

Other than the signatures most of the designs haven't changed much since I was in Guatemala in 1998, other than the 1 quetzal note coming in a polymer variety. (I've seen older notes online and the designs only have a few minor changes since about the 1980s.) One of these days may finish the set and get the 20, 50, and 100.

 

I lived in Jamaica for 2 years & only managed to keep a ratty $20 at the last minute. I had rules back then (in 1995) & one of them was that I didn't collect World (only CAD) which seems absurd now. But I was paid super low wages & had to fight tooth & nail to get the $ that my employer owed me.

We collect according to what we can afford. Try to remember the context (when you were in Guatemala). The most common UNC notes I came across were the $500 (or $100 Jamaican note). Both of these I needed for groceries or taxi fares back in Kingston (95 & 96). It wasn't the safest city to get around in. I was "living pay-check to pay-check" but if money was easier back then, I'd probably have kept a few UNC $100.

I came across the following denominations low denominations once at a bar where a couple of ratty examples were in a tip tray. The bar tender didn't mind me examining them as they were worth cents ($34 JD = $1 USD). I remember looking at them & thinking I would love to pick up a few nice ones (as souvenirs) someday. When I started collecting World about 10 years ago, these were super cheap so I put off buying. Since then, their prices have steadily krept up so that the $5.00 now can be nearly $10 USD (even though it is quite common according to Numista). The only cheap one is the $2.00. I still need the 50 Cents note which I never saw while there.

Another thing is: very few services/retail outlets allowed VISA (or plastic) back then. Cash was worn out much quicker in hot, humid Caribbean (Central American countries) countries where "cash was king."