Year of the Snake banknotes from Macau

Recently I wrote the following text in a post about the Lunar New Year.

Macau has authorised the Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) and the Bank of China from 2012 to 2023 to issue a maximum of 20 million special notes with a face value of 10 patacas for the forthcoming Lunar Year of the Snake. Last year with the Year of the Dragon 'only' 10 million notes were printed which led to ridiculous speculation. Especially the banknotes with one or more 8's at the end of the serial number were sold for top prizes.

According to this article the rush for special banknotes has still overwhelmed the servers of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino. To be honest: the special banknotes do look very nice.