I know Iraq has had a problem with counterfeit notes. I am now under the impression i have some.. alot. Recently i posted a thread about recieving aide in reading Arabic numerals. Well, going though my notes with written arabic dates and serials, i came upon Iraq. I have gotten Iraqi note from a variety of sources, including a couple recent shipments. What i found when i started combining the notes .. is that not only are some of the notes the same but they are all sequential!!!! I mean, when a note i just got is put next to a note i have had in my collection for some time... the number was sequential to the new note. Statistical speaking... this is impossible. It is possible for it to happen with possibly 1 note. But not the number i times i have sitting in front of me! I am counting maybe 6 or 8 instances - and i havenet gone through them all. Now, i am new to the whole understanding of reading these Arabic numbers... so i could be off. Does anyone have any sane explanation for this.. other then what i already think, and that is i have a boatload of counterfeits???? Also ... can anyone tell me how to tell a counterfeit from a real Iraqi note - both pre-Saddam and post-Saddam????
The late Sadaam notes (around 2002 or so) seemed to have a lot of problems with serial mismatches to the point that ones with that error seem almost more common than ones without it, especially on the 10,000 dinar note. I don't think they were counterfeited heavily... the high denomination notes did have some protective features, like a security strip and a watermark of Sadaam. Post-Sadaam the Iraqi dinar has such a low value I can't see why anyone would bother to counterfeit them... Iraq's economy is a bit more stable now but there's still about 1200 dinars to the US dollar currently (right before and after the invasion it was like 15,000 though so it is stabilising somewhat). For comparison's sake, just before the first Gulf War (around 1990) the Iraqi dinar was worth about 3 US dollars. If you post some pictures I, and others here, could tell you if there's any obvious signs of them being counterfeit. Don't estimate the power of coincidence either... if you've got a lot of notes from the same source it wouldn't be unusual to end up with some sequential ones. Note that the Sadaam notes are no longer legal tender... I think the Iraqi government was excahnging new notes for them for a time, but the grace period's probably over by now... so they only have value as collectibles (probably more valuable that way then the currency exchange; more of them were sold as souviniers than turned in probably lol...). The post-Sadaam notes look very similar to the old designs usually, just minus Sadaam. If you're having trouble with Arabic numbers, try here to help. (What a lot of people call "Arabic numerals" are in fact Indian lol...). Note that while Arabic script is normally read right to left, Arabic numbers are read left to right.
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/budget/IraqCurrencyExchange.html Redemptions of Saddam notes was between October 15th 2003 to January 15th 2004
thanks i have no intention of trying to cash them in. I boguht them for my collection knowing they didnt have any value aside from a collectors value. I was just trying to figure out if they were real. I got these notes from 5 or 6 sources. It seems every time i buy a lot, it has Iraqi currency in it (along with ever other currency no longer valid). I know the currency valueof the Iraqi Dinar is relatively low (i thought it was pegged at 1350 to each US dollar) but still read it was heavily counterfeited - especially the new notes. I was hoping to find a website that would talk about the counterfeit notes and give examples of how to tell the real ones from the fake ones. I could have all real notes, and like you said, maybe the original source of all these notes is the same person even though i got them from several others. Still .. it is very weird!
