HIGH DENOMINATION NOTES Public Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 8, Number 1, January 2, 2005, Article 7
HIGH DENOMINATION NOTES
Regarding last week's question, Arthur Shippee
writes: "I have or had somewhere a 60 million
mark note, I believe it was. But you'll want
to check China post WWII, too."Dave Hirt writes:
"you asked about the the highest inflation note.
I am sure it was the Hungarian Pengõ. The õ is
pronounced as "er". It is interesting because I am
writing you from Budapest. In the summer of 1946 the
highest note was 1 billion trillion pengõ. This is
one followed by 21 or 22 zeros. Later that year the
Forint currency was introduced. One Forint was
given for each one, followed by 29 zeros. I have
no idea how to say that number. There is a famous
picture of a street sweeper sweeping up paper money
that had been thrown into the street."Ronald S. Thompson writes: "I am not sure of the answer
but I have two "funfzig Milliarden Mk" notes from
between the world wars (October 1923). Funfzig
Milliarden for those not familiar with the term is a 5
followed by ten zeros or 50,000,000,000, which is
printed on the note. I am also curious about what
larger ones were issued. The ones I have were
circulated and only cost a couple of dollars each or
less so they are fun things to collect."Steve D'Ippolito writes: "To the best of my knowledge
the recordholder is still the 1 Milliard B Pengo note
from Hungary, (P137 from the Seventh Edition). The
B stands for "Billion." Hungary follows the same
system as England when denoting large numbers, where
1,000,000,000 is a "milliard" or thousand million,
not a billion, and 1,000,000,000,000, a million
million, is a "billion," not a trillion. (I suppose
that 1,000,000,000,000,000--a "thousand billion" or
a quadrillion to us in the States--might be called
a "billiard" but I am only speculating!)The milliard B-pengo note is therefore 1,000,000,000
x 1,000,000,000,000 pengos. Or to save my poor 0
key from further abuse, 1 x 10^21 in scientific
notation. To us in the states that's 1 sextillion
pengos.I own a Yugoslav 500,000,000,000 (500 billion or
milliard) dinar note from 1993. That was on the heels
of several droppings of multiple zeros (they dropped
6 zeros earlier that year, 1 in 1992, 4 in 1990, and
2 in 1965) --if you roll those back in (which might
be cheating), that note ends up being 13 more zeroes
on top of the 11 zeroes already on the note--you end
up with 5x10^24 1964 dinars, which is 5 quadrillion
(5 million million million million) by the British
system and 5 septillion by ours. But that's not
all--immediately after this, they lopped NINE more
zeros off their currency and shortly thereafter issued
a 10 million dinar note--so that's seven zeros on the
note, plus a total of 22 zeros dropped since 1965,
for 1 x 10^29 pre-1965 dinars. I think that's 100
octillion by the US system or 100,000 quadrillion by
the English system. I don't know what happened after
that--my edition of Pick is woefully out of date.
I don't doubt inflation has continued there, though
they seem to have been trying to tie their money to
the deutschemark.Now I have to chase down one of those 10 million
(or 100 octillion) dinar notes!"David Gladfelter writes: "On the new Turkish lira:
The old Bir Milyon Turk Lirasi note is a feel-good
note to have in your collection. Own one and be an
international millionaire. Mine cost ~$23 in the 1990s.- 2005-01-02
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