I think I want one of these.

[randomness]

According to various news reports, it was worth about €30 when it came out a little over two weeks ago. It buys a loaf of bread now. The government has just announced that it is lopping off twelve zeroes off the currency, and that all old currency will be declared worthless as of June 30th.



I can wait.

Comments

[blipvert.livejournal.com]

Me too!

How ironic -- the mere act of the government declaring the notes worthless will actually cause them to have some value, while now they really are worthless even though the government says otherwise.

Of course it makes sense, as discontinuing a currency is the ultimate deflationary act. It will be interesting to see whether the dead currency overtakes the live ones, and by what margin.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Oh, the dead currencies--they have two others, as they've lopped off something like 13 zeroes already in two separate changes the last couple of years--have all become worth more on the collector market than they are worth as legal tender in pretty short order, regardless of what the government does; it's not a matter of the government saying something and the notes suddenly having more value.

It's more like, there's some base value that the notes have as collectors items (call it a penny a note, say) and the face value drops through that base value faster than the government can keep up.

The hardest part of getting the notes is going to Zimbabwe to collect them, I think, and even then I think people can ship them out, although because of currency restrictions and lack of postage they may have to do it from across the border.

The border controls are pretty lax, though. Well, at least for tourists they are. I could have been carrying a backpack full of cash if I'd really wanted to. When I changed something like 80 Botswanan pula--less than $25, at the time--I got a double-handful sized brick of Zimbabwe paper money in exchange, so a backpack full wouldn't have been much.