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Markets in everything: Gresham's Law inverted
Zimbabwean bank notes. They're selling above face value in many cases. The 50 billion note [sic] is going for about $12.
I thank David Welton for the pointer.
Update: Zimbabwe introduces $100 billion note.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 19, 2008 at 07:17 PM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
That's just [sic]
Posted by: Anonymous_Coward at Jul 19, 2008 7:46:02 PM
More than that! This one went for almost $120. I'd buy one for $12, if I could!
According to the RBZ 50B ZWD is worth just under $2 US. I can't help but wonder why there aren't more of these notes showing up on Ebay than there are.
Posted by: Jeff at Jul 19, 2008 8:41:15 PM
Am I the only one who thinks the smaller bills would be more interesting? The Zimbabwe government is printing these bills in large quantities, and it's almost certain that before the regime collapses they'll be printing $200b bills, $500b bills, etc., So these $50b and $100b bills would be nothing special. Also, their value is about one US dollar, within an order of magnitude, so again, nothing special.
A Zimbabwe one dollar bill, on the other hand ... I don't know how rare those are, but I'd imagine most of them have already been destroyed. And imagine owning something that is literally worth less than one billionth of a dollar!
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Jul 19, 2008 9:21:37 PM
The Zimbabwe one dollar bill might actually be worth a bit more than a billionth of a dollar. It's still useful for a few things beyond a collectors item. It can be burned for example.
Posted by: Andrew Rawlings at Jul 19, 2008 9:35:03 PM
I'm with Jeff.
I suspect it is hard to get 100 billion dollar notes out of Zimbabwe (or at least dangerous). Otherwise I bet an enterprising person could put them up for sale here in the USA. It would probably be considered bad taste to start some save Zimbabwe charity offering these things in exchange for contributions of a certain level.
Posted by: themightypuck at Jul 19, 2008 11:53:33 PM
edit ^ obviously I meant beyond ad hoc sales.
Posted by: themightypuck at Jul 19, 2008 11:57:35 PM
I'm holding out for the even trillion.
Posted by: Alex F at Jul 20, 2008 4:21:40 AM
And to think my dad was a Zimbabwean millionaire since his trip back in 2003...
Posted by: Daniel Corradi at Jul 20, 2008 5:15:35 AM
There's a great picture in the current issue of the economist, of a man holding up a sign with the inscription:
"starving billionaire"
Posted by: nyongesa at Jul 20, 2008 8:27:54 AM
I have a cousin who worked in Zaire in the 1990s when they were going through a severe inflation. One interesting story from him was that relative currency values were not constant. For example a 5 million note was worth less than 5 one million notes. Apparantly, the 5 million notes were considered a sign of economic failure, so people didn't really want them as much as 5 million in smaller bills. Also, the mail service was 100% not trustable, with anything of value stolen by customs and/or postal workers. So, if Zimbabwe is similar in that respect -and I am sure that it is given the current state of affairs- it would be quite difficult for Zimbabwe entrepreneurs to sell the notes on ebay, since they couldn't be mailed out.
Posted by: liberalarts at Jul 20, 2008 4:23:11 PM
I bought some to frame and hang at the office. I did get some on ebay, and I know I paid more than the official exchange rate. I look at it as a form of charity, or art, or both; like buying lemonade from the neighbor's kid's stand when you're not really thirsty. They came DHL, so it wasn't likely to be plundered by the postal workers (a past Russian girlfriend mentioned that birthday cards in Russia also had a habit of "breaking open" in transit), and shipping more than doubled the cost of getting them. Besides, this is about the only way I can be a "millionaire" with currency that could almost be used for Monopoly™ money. The largest one I have is a $100M note, so it looks like I need to troll ebay because my tastes are a little more expensive - I want to be a "billionaire" now!
Posted by: Peter at Jul 20, 2008 8:23:03 PM
That same cousin put together a complete set of real (Zaire) money for monopoly.
Posted by: liberarts at Jul 20, 2008 8:50:16 PM
I keep thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Botted Imp" He'd have
a lot of chances now to sell that damn Imp!
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