The infamous Zimbabwean $100 trillion dollar bill

The popular $100,000,000,000,000 bill from Zimbabwe. It's worth less than 50 cents at face value. I found some online and they were asking $55 for them. Are they really selling for that? I got mine uncirculated in 2013 for less than $5. Did they go up that much in value that quickly? If so then I made a good investment.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Awesome.

 

Some of them have sold for quite high prices online. It's not entirely clear why. One theory is that perhaps somebody's been spreading rumors that Zimbabwe is going to get its act together and then these notes will actually be worth their former face value, thousands of USD. Of course, that's not how currency valuations work--but similar rumors went around a few years back about the Iraqi dinar, with the result that some uninformed would-be investors were suckered into paying big bucks for Iraqi notes that were worth pocket change in the collector market (and even less in face value).

 

They do sell for that much routinely. It's because it's the highest denomination "dollar" note that's written out in numbers. I regret not buying some a few years ago.

 

If I had known what I know now, I would have bought 10 or 20 of them and made a tidy profit.

 

Haha, I'd have bought a whole brick of 'em!

 

They were going along at $5-10.00 a piece until the Wall Street Journal published an article about the 100 Trillion note. Then demand rose and sales took off.

I spoke to one dealer who had them listed on Ebay as a buy it now for $10.00. They sold 2,000 pieces the day the article came out. They had no idea what was going on and pushed their prices up throughout the day and people kept buying.

I have a client who believes in the global revaluation of currency scam and had been buying Zimbabwe dollars, Vietnamese dong and Iraqi dinars expecting to get rich when the gnomes in Zurich did the "reset" of currency values. He is still waiting.

 

More of a novelty then anything else

 

If you look to the far right of the note where the cow is, you will notice that it appears to be flinging "dung" which when this currency was being used in Zimbabwe was probably worth more as fertilizer than this bill was. Kind of wonder that someone was making a point with that.

 

LOL

 

I own a few graded examples. I think most collector's who bought one did so for the novelty. That's why I bought some.

Aside from the increase in value due to the Wall Street Journal article previously mentioned, production was also discontinued a few years ago. That also gave it a little bump in value although there are millions in uncirculated condition in existence.

 

I would like to have an example of every Zimbabwean note issued during the inflationary period. I know of no database that can say what they were.

 

According to the WSJ article and my failing memory, the notes were never released for circulation. All of the notes were supposed to be destroyed. Several high level Zimbabwean bureaucrats swiped bricks of them which they sold to select dealers. Prices for the notes escalated after the WSJ article was published.

 

i smell a rat, why the WSJ would publish such an article is beyond me..

 

I remember 50 - 60 years ago confederate currency was thought worthless. Check out prices now.

 

This will tell you everything you need to know if you want to collect them individually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar

There are several eBay sellers with complete sets of notes from the 4th Zimbabwean dollar.

 

The interesting thing is that this series of Zimbabwean dollars starts at a lowly $1. That's right, a 100 trillion bill that is worth maybe 50 cents at face value goes all the way down to $1.

 

Actually, I should have linked to this page previously rather than the hyperinflation page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_Zimbabwe

 

They got a lot of newsprint space to fill.

 

so what,s the $1 worth..LOL