If you’re too cheap to buy expensive stuff and would rather hang on to your money, then just for you, we have some of the world’s highest denomination banknotes.
If you lived in Hungary in 1946 you might have found the 100 Million B-Pengo in your wallet, it never had all the zeros printed on it as there were too many but it would have looked something like this: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pengo.
Now if you travelled to the United States with one of these in your pocket you would have been luck to buy a cup of coffee, it was worth only $.20 USD.
Also back in 1946 Hungary printed the 1 Milliard B-Pengo, that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pengo, but it was never released.
Had it been released and you took this baby to the United States your 1 Sextillion Pengo would net you $2.00 USD.
Although neither of these banknotes are in circulation any longer, they can fetch up to $200.00 from collectors.
Now let’s travel to the former Yugoslavia and jump ahead to December 23, 1993.
On this date to keep up with rampant inflation Yugoslavia issued the 500 billion dinar note, that’s a 5 followed by 11 zeros, but shortly after cut off nine of the zeros .
This is the highest denomination banknote ever printed with all the zeros on it.
Again, if you travelled to the States with this note you would have been lucky to buy lunch.
Although the American $100,000 bill doesn’t have that many zeros, it has enough to be the world’s most expensive banknote.
Unfortunately most people could never get their hands on one, not because of what they were worth but due to the fact that the bills were used for intra-government transactions and were illegal to own by citizens. The bills were discontinued in 1940, but if you had one now and weren’t arrested it would be worth $1,620,000 in 2010 dollars.
In case you’re wondering, that is a portrait of Woodrow Wilson.
