100 trillion dollar banknote from Zimbabwe, on sale for 90 cents

In 2008 I mentioned that a one hundred billion dollar banknote was being auctioned on eBay with a high bid of AU$87.

Today, you can buy a one hundred trillion dollar banknote on Amazon for US$0.90 (plus $4.94 shipping).

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad

I can’t be the only person who thinks of Dr. Evil saying “One hundred TRILLION dollars!”
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

I have a small collection of paper currency, and I’m seriously tempted by this. Admittedly it would be the most I’d ever paid for an item of paper currency (not counting the bills I have left over from trips to various countries).

My favorite item in my collection, though, is a Korean 1000 won note. It fell out of a copy of Catch-22 I bought at a used bookstore. If you count the cost of the book I paid $2 and change for it.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  A friend of mine went to Zimbabwe about five years ago and gave a slide-show party when he came back and gave out billion(?) dollar notes as party favors.
  - teapot
    
    Now everyone can has a 100 trillion dollar note:
    http://www.reposter.net/2013/03/print-yourself-one-hundred-trillion-dollars-to-save-yourself-90-cents/
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
    
    After returning from a trip to Russia* I still had stacks and stacks of ruble notes and handed most of them out to friends. Being colorful and interesting they made nice presents.
    
    *When I booked that trip I was going to the Soviet Union. When I got on the plane I was going to Russia. That’s one of the joys of travel.
Warren Grant

Perfect for making a bet you might lose: “I bet you a hundred trillion dollars you can’t do that” etc etc. When you do lose, hand this over :P
Doctor Device

I kind of want one… I’d frame it, just for the hell of it.

is it just me, or did they use the Rock Band logo font for their money, with a straightened-out capital A.
- welcomeabored
  
  I was wondering how that rock creature from Star Trek got on the front…
  
  http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/multimedia/2007/11/gallery_star_trek_monsters?slide=10
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1452044540 Kris Åsard
    
    Come now, that looks nothing like the Horta!
    It is, however, the spitting image of “Rocky” from MLPFIM:
    http://youtu.be/JHy3ZhY9VKs
Mark Stephan

And it only cost 1 trillion dollars to make.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Drop/100000929402049 Robert Drop

I think I’ll wait a year and pick up the 100 quintillion dollar note.
- Peacen1k
  
  Gonna hold out for a 100 bazillion note.
- BillStewart2012
  
  Remember that Zimbabwe has already devalued their currency a few times – they’ve dropped at least 30 zeroes from the money since they started hyperinflating. As a friend of mine put it “They’ve diluted it so much that the bills only contain homeopathic quantities of money.”
http://www.facebook.com/dmaclennan2 Darren MacLennan

The bottom link is self-referential, instead of going to Amazon.
Rickenbacker4001

I gave these to my family on Christmas in their cards..Not the 100 trillion ones, because that’s just cruel…
peregrinus

I love that in the bottom right there’s an individual code. Like it matters.
http://twitter.com/sparrowlab Katie Scully

$4.95 shipping, though.
- Lupus_Yonderboy
  
  Don’t you mean Five Hundred And Forty Eight TRILLION?
http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

Whats the exchange rate for neopets?
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

That $0.90 price is about a 250% markup over the face value, BTW.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Albie-Farinas/1318745200 Albie Farinas
  
  actually it’s worth slightly less than 4 cents…
Lupus_Yonderboy

These will go great for my Snow Crash LARP, I just need to put Reagan’s face on them.
http://twitter.com/ErnestValdemar Ernest Valdemar

Somewhere, in a box in a closet, I’ve got an inch-thick stack of Weimar Republic Deutschmarks that my grandfather had picked up somewhere. Should I sell them on eBay, one at a time?
Humbabella

I’m think the actual value of the bill is nothing, not 4 cents. I’ve had one in my wallet for a couple of years now. The person who gifted it to me was fairly sure that they were put up for sale by a former finance minister who had to flee the country, though he couldn’t prove it.
paddle2paddle

I’ve got about 400 trillion in Zimbabwean notes that I bought for my classroom for when I talk about hyperinflation. It’s fun to show students the big stacks of bills that people used to buy things like loaves of bread and then show them the bills themselves. They’re also very pretty, and I may frame them at some point in time.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  Hell you could get enough and make wallpaper.
Mister44

1) I love the font that the “trillion dollars” is in.

2) What does its say about your country where the most interesting thing you can find to put on your money is a pile of rocks.

3) Collecting stamps when I was younger I saw postage stamps that reflected the hyper inflation of Germany. I think the biggest stamp denomination I had was 10 million marks.
- http://twitter.com/ErnestValdemar Ernest Valdemar
  
  “2) What does its say about your country where the most interesting thing you can find to put on your money is a pile of rocks.”
  
  Great Zimbabwe
  
  Marvelous country, magnificent history. Shitty current rulers.
- Symbiote
  
  Ireland’s pile of rocks: http://group.ulsterbank.com/images/content/1960-1970.jpg
  
  New Hampshire’s pile of rocks: http://www.goldcoinsandsilvercoins.com/600px-New_Hampshire_quarter__reverse_side__2000.jpg
  
  At least they don’t put God on their money.
  - Mister44
    
    Yeah but the old man in the mountain looks like something. There are naturally carved stone sculptures out there for sure. This is probably one of them, but it just looks like a pile or rocks.
James Penrose

So, this is what that guy in Nigeria intends to send me, really soon now?

Now I know the money exists, I can send him the cash he needs for the emergency fees.
theSamLowry

Hopefully Zimbabwe gets on the ball and starts selling their currency – seems to be the only guaranteed source of income.
timquinn

How can I be sure it is not counterfeit?
- CLamb
  
  If it were counterfeit it would be much more expensive.
zim99

i’m a Zimbabwean. the price paid here of 90 cents. Ironically is way more valuable than when printed. when the note came out – you couldn’t exchange it for 90 cents on the black market. it was worth fractions of one cent.
it was cheaper to use the notes for toilet paper. than actually buying the toilet paper.

i did an “illegal” currency deal in the city – where I had a pick up truck of local notes. took me an hour to load it onto the buyers pickup truck.

the USD i received in exchange- easily fitted in my wallet.

in the end, people were weighing the money. and quoting kgs. instead of trying to calculate the numbers. and remember we removed 6 zero’s off the currency before we hit the 100 trillion note.

people starved. shops were empty. it remains a brutal dictatorship. it deserves it’s first freedom ever.

it went from a white racist dictatorship, to a black racist dictatorship with massive poverty and even more death.

but tonight, right this moment, that you read this. someone in my country is being tortured, beaten, starved.
the 100 trillion note is amusing.

but people should know that it stands for 100 trillion cries for help.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8834925 Chauncey Scott

So this is how King Jofi Jofur afforded his lavish lifestyle.
Rogoraeck

So everyone can become a “trillionaire”
http://www.marketmentat.com/ Kratoklastes

A French chap of my acquaintance from an old banking dynasty (the Leygues) has an entire wall that holds framed stock certificates going back to the 1700s – each generation’s investments had at least one that ‘went to zero’, and those certificates are the ones that were framed as a cautionary tale to future generations.

It’s a fascinating idea for decoration (but I’m almost certain that the person in question had the idea himself and then collected the exemplars: bankers always lie).

Anyhooo… I’ma git me one of them thar Zim-bub-way big-denom notes, and be a multi-trillionaire, bitches!
Pekar

I sold one of these bills on Craigslist for $50 a couple years ago. I felt guilty and gave him two hundred trillion dollars instead.
http://twitter.com/SaaidRahbeeni Saaid Rahbeeni

Could b a good time to stock up on Zim dollars, maybe, by some miracle, the currency appreciates again, then change your notes back to your local currency.