Found this article on eBay which does a good job of explaining in a concise manner why buying Iraqi dinars as an investment (hoping to gain money by reselling them at a higher foreign exchange value) is a sucker's bet (you literally would be better off buying lottery tickets instead!). http://reviews.ebay.com/Why-NOT-to-invest-in-Iraqi-Dinars_W0QQugidZ10000000000872236 Of course there's nothing wrong with buying them purely for the sake of collecting them. They are nice notes, and a key part of Iraq's history and such. But don't go buying mass quanities hoping to get rich of a massive increase in the nominal value. It's not going to happen anytime soon... and if it ever does they're likely to declare any notes issued provisionally no longer legal tender anyway. Key point is that the pre-Kuwait invasion value of the Iraq dinar at US $3.22 was not indicative of its actual value... the exchange rate was set by Saddam Hussein and the currency was not freely traded, so there was no international test of the validity of the exchange rate in a free market.
Good post Troodon, I have a few examples but they are for my collection and woudnt touch the large expensive blocks LOL
I will have to dig it out, I have a lettre from the Central Bank of Iraq from back in 1988, then they were selling uncirculated Dinar denominated notes for the equivalent of $1.67 a Dinar. Sure they had an official rate, that was close to what the Kuwaiti Dinar was selling for, but even the Central Bank of Iraq knew that they couldn't even sell their notes to collectors at the official rate, and discounted them at approximately 50% of the official rate.
Big time! Think about it logically, if you had a pile of Iraqi dinars that you think were going to increase in value by thousands of times, would you be selling them? Of course not, you'd be buying as many as you could get your hands on! Of course buying say, one or a few of each denomination or such, purely for collector's interest, that makes sense... to satisfy your desire to collect them, not as an investment of course. (They are beautiful designs... and from what is definitely a key point in Iraq's history.) But buying mass quanities on the hopes the Iraqi dinar will soar in value is just plain rediculous, and anyone trying to get you believe that doing so is a great investment is delusional, or trying to scam you, or both.
