On 25 December 2012 the National Bank of Tajikistan introduced new 5 and 10 Somoni banknotes. The design is the same as the previous versions (P15 and P16) but in the new design a Kinegram stripe has been introduced on the front. The notes of 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 Somoni already have a Kinegram stripe.
Unfortunately, the National Bank only has these two small images available but I'm looking for larger images.
You can read more about Kinegrams on this wikipedia site or in my list of security features.
According to this article Angola will issue its first two banknotes of the new series in January 2013. This will be the 5000 and 10.000 kwanza notes. Angola currently has 2,000, 1,000, 100, 50, 10, and 5 kwanza banknotes in circulation. Governor José Massano of the National Bank said that authorisation for the new banknotes had been granted in June. Massano also noted that the decision to put more banknotes into circulation was due to the governments wish to popularise the use of the kwanza, which is used alongside the US dollar for transactions in Angola.
The Bank of England has released a list of 150 names put forward by the public with famous Britons to be considered for the new 10 Pound banknote. This note currently has an image of Charles Darwin on the back.
Some of the new names include David Beckham, Mick Jagger, The Beatles, Sir Winston Churchill and William Shakespeare. The most likely new face however is Second World War Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing who died in 1954. More than 25.000 people have signed an online petition calling for recognition of his achievements.
Turkey has announced that new signature varieties will be issued on 24 December 2012. The new varieties will be for the 10, 20 and 100 Lira banknotes. The following signatures will be issued:
On 15 January 2013 Transnistria will issue new banknotes. The design will stay the same but the notes will have additional security features. One of these feautures will be a security thread. Also the date on the notes will be changed to 2012. More info can be found on this site (in Russian).
I've compiled a list of a lot of security feautures which can be found on banknotes these days. These aren't all security features known today but as a first try, it's fairly complete. The list will be updated when possible.
You can find the list here or in the menu on the right under 'help with collecting'.
With the issuance of the new Moroccan 25 Dirhams scheduled for this month, Bank al Maghrib, Morocco's central bank, will become the first in the world to issue a banknote printed on Durasafe. This is a new paper-polymer-paper composite produced by Fortress Paper at the Landqart mill.
The front of the banknote features an Intaglio vignette and a watermark of King Mohammed VI, and a magenta/green colourshift security thread developed by the company's wholly owned subsidiary, Fortress Optical Features Ltd. The thread, like the watermark, is embedded inside the banknote yet visible behind a one-sided polymer window. It also has a fully transparent polymer window embossed with the King's royal crest. The back of the note carries a print vignette commemorating 25 years of banknote printing at the Moroccan State Printing Works, Dar As Sikkah.
The windows in Durasafe are formed by die cutting each side of the three layer composite substrate separately. One sided windows (Viewsafe) give a clear view inside the substrate where the FOF thread and the watermark of King Mohammed VI are protected, but fully visible behind the polymer core. The transparent window (Thrusafe) is created by die-cutting both the outer paperlayers to reveal only the transparent polymer core.
The Indonesian government has announced plans to reduce the number of zeros on the rupiah by three beginning in 2014. The redenomination will simplify payment processes in a national currency upon which many people already ignore the last three zeroes.
That note has now been nominated for two awards according to Businesslife.co: the International Association of Currency Affairs’ (IACA) Excellence in Currency Awards: Best New Banknote Award and the International Bank Note Society’s (IBNS) The Banknote of the Year Award.
The Excellence in Currency Awards were introduced by IACA in 2007 to promote and recognise excellence in currency issue, production, processing, management and distribution. The IBNS Banknote of the Year Award can only be entered if an IBNS member nominates a note and it is judged on artistic merit, imaginative designs, use of colour and modern security features. The winner will be featured on the IBNS website and the IBNS Journal which have a large international following.
MRI reports the following: "According to local reports the governments of Curacao and Sint Maarten will decide next week whether to continue their monetary union. If they do decide to split, probably Sint Maarten will adopt the United States dollar."
This discussion has been going back and forth the last few months. Have they finally made a decision?
I already wrote about the tender which the Bank of England issued for the printing of the British banknotes from 2015 to 2029. Part of the new tender is a demand that the new printer is able to cope with changes from paper to polymer banknotes.
Does this mean that in the future the British pounds will be a polymer note? That will probably be the case for the lower denominations. Their lifespan is very short as a paper banknote. A polymer pound would last a lot longer.
Will the Bank switch completely to polymer? Only time will tell.
Well, here’s a surprise nobody could see coming (yes, I’m using irony here).
An adviser to Libya’s Central Bank has said that although the Central Bank has worked for quite a while to issue a new paper currency, “the new currency had not been issued yet”. He said that images of the new currency published on social networking sites are not correct. He also indicated that the new currency would be issued at the end of the year, and will be traded in the market early in 2013.
I already wrote about this upcoming issue in this post in which I noted that the circulating images differ from the ones being shown in the video. I’ll still put my money on the ‘video notes’.
Update 8 January 2013: It appears like I was wrong with my predicition. Al Watan has published pictures of the new currency and they show the pictures which actually HAVE been been circulating in the social media. This publication has been copied by the MRI Bankers' Guide which gives the claim a lot of credibility.
The suspense is killing me! Just publish the official press release already...
The Swiss National Bank has announced (PDF) that the new series of banknotes has again been delayed. The new series will be issued in 2015 at the earliest with the 50-francs banknote as the first banknote of the series and the 20-francs the second. From the press release:
The development of the new banknote series began in 2005 with a design competition. In the planning phase for the technical feasibility and during initial production tests in 2010, it became evident that the complexity of the new security features necessitated a postponement of the issue date to autumn 2012. In autumn 2011, during an early phase of the serial production, technical difficulties arose which had not been discernible in the testing phase, whose results were positive. For this reason, the SNB this year decided to conduct a comprehensive re-assessment of the entire project together with the industrial partners producing the new banknote on its behalf. As a result, several mostly technical measures were defined and in some cases have already been implemented. These measures should ensure that the series can go into long-term industrial production.
The decision to postpone has been made easier because of the high standard of security of the current series. About the design the SNB has previously (PDF) made the following remarks:
As mentioned in previous announcements, the new banknote series depicts Switzerland as a meeting place and platform for organisation, creativity, adventure, humanity, progress and dialogue. The current denominations of CHF 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 1,000 and the familiar colours of the individual denominations will remain unchanged, although the new notes will be slightly smaller than the current series.
The designer of the new banknotes is Manuela Pfrunder who entered the competition for the new design with this series of drafts. The final banknotes will differ however from these drafts. The final design will not be published until shortly before the issue date.
Here is something you don't see everyday: the inside of the gold bullion vault of the Bank of England. I know: they're not banknotes but there was a time when this was the backup for all issued banknotes.
Banknote printer Giesecke & Devrient has developed a new (and pretty cool) security feature for banknotes. In the future you can check if a banknote is false using your mobile phone! It’s called MAGnite and will be introduced at the Banknote conference in Washington D.C. where the latest trends are introduced to the banknote industry.
From their website: “MAGnite uses high-performance pigments that allow reversible changes between two color states. Highly resistant micro capsules enclose these pigments, without in any way limiting their flexibility. The alignment of the pigments and the colors perceived can be controlled externally simply with magnetic effects.“
You can read more about it in this article at the website of Giesecke & Devrient.
Today Fiji announced the design for the new banknotes. Queen Elizabeth II has indeed been removed but not replaced by dictators or other people as some feared, but by birds, fish, flowers and an insect. The new currency will be issued to the public on 2 January 2013.
The design of the new banknotes:
$5 Red-throated lorikeet (bird) – this will be a polymer note $10 Lever’s goby (fish) $20 The Fiji petrel (bird) $50 Tagimoucia (flower) $100 Cicada (insect)
Update: you can view the presentation of the new banknotes in this video, skip to 56:00 for the notes. I've finally managed to find decent high resolutuon pictures of the new banknotes. I think the design by De la Rue is beautiful!
In an article in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo a few weeks ago it's mentioned that Brazilian prosecutor Jefferson Aparecido Dias has filed a complaint about the nations banknotes and demands that everyone of them is replaced. The reason for this claim? The sentence "Deus Seja Louvado" (God Be Praised) which appears on the banknotes from Brazil.
His argument is that the Brazilian state is a secular one and should refrain itself from any religious manifestation. He does acknowledge that most of Brazil is Christian but he compared it to the situation where all of a sudden Praise Allah, Praise Buddah or God Doesn't Exist would appear on the banknotes. People would be angry then, so why not protect the minority of non-Christians in Brazil in this case?
The bank’s response to the prosecutor mentioned that the state, "not being atheist, anticlerical or antireligious, can legitimately make a reference to the existence of a higher being, a divinity, as long as, in doing so, it does not make an allusion to a specific religious doctrine."
Vietnam will withdraw the 10.000 and 20.000 Dong from 1 January 2013. This has sparked a trade in these banknotes in Vietnam. People want to buy them as a souvenir or because they think the notes will be worth much more in the future. They're being offered sometimes at four times the face value. Some people claim these banknotes are so popular because of the beautiful colors: "the VND10,000 paper note dubbed “The Queen of all VND banknotes” symbolizes luck thanks to its bright shade of red – a favorite color during Tet holiday."
You can read about this business in this charming article which also deals with collecting money (yaay, it's legal!) and the growing e-business in Vietnam.
According to MRI Bankers’ Guide Turkmenistan has modified its 1 and 5 manat notes. The 1 and 5 manat notes dated 2012 have been improved by the addition of a transluscent band in the back.
I’ve tried to find the official press release on the site of the Central Bank of Turkmenistan but Google Translate doesn’t now the language yet which makes it hard to search. I’ll take MRI’s word for it though. Update: this seems to be it.
A lot of new additions this week after my visit to the IBNS Netherlands fair in Hilversum last Sunday! It was a great fair. Much smaller than the big fair in Maastricht but I was a lot happier when I left. A total of 18 new banknotes and 12 new countries added to my collection!
The last note from Laos is one of my favorite notes ever. I think the design and colors are stunning. This has been on my wish list for a long time and I could finally get it for a good price this weekend.
The Bank of England has put out a tender of 1 billion Pound for the printing of all its banknotes. This means that De la Rue could lose its contract but also that for the first time in history British Pounds could be printed by a foreign printer. De la Rue has been the printer of Britains notes since 2003.
The new tender is for a 14 year contract: 2015 – 2029. Apart from De la Rue, the tender had been sent to a number of foreign printers. Among them Landqart and Note Printing Australia, a division of the Reserve Bank of Australia. There are a few demands in the tender:
Printing must take place in the Bank’s former facility in Debden, Essex. This facility is now run by De la Rue. If another party wins the contract, the facility with its 200 employees moves to the new owner.
Any bidder must have experience of banknote printing, having printed volumes of at least 500 million notes at a single site in a year within the last three years.
This could be another blow to De la Rue if they lose this contract. The orders from the Bank of England make up for 5% of their annual revenue.
Reminder for anyone who wants to visit: IBNS Netherlands holds its annual fair TODAY in Hilversum. You can read more about it in this post. The fair will be held from 10:00-16:00 at Hotel Lapershoek, Utrechtseweg 16 in Hilversum.
The Bank of Uganda has announced it will demonetize the 1987 series of their banknotes on 30 March 2013. This includes the 1000, 5000, 10.000, 20.000 and 50.000 Shillings as well as the 10.000 Shillings commemorative note. Only the 2010 series will remain legal tender in Uganda. The 1987 series can be viewed in this PDF.
The 50.000 Shillings from the 2010 series which will remain legal tender:
After the Creede banknote, I found another article with an old banknote from a bank which no longer exists today. This is the 1 Pound note from the Watford Bank issued in the UK in 1823. It is part of the collection of property investor David Kirch. His collection will be auctioned in 4 parts at Spink.
Watford Bank was founded in 1823 - during the reign of King George IV, formerly the Prince Regent - and went bust in 1826, as many of the English provincial banks did at this time. It was run by three local businessmen - Joseph Pike, William Horwill and Thomas Pike. In fact, it is Joseph Pike’s handwritten signature which appears in the bottom right hand corner of the pound note coming up for sale next week.
The note is expected to sell for around £300-£400.
Today came the news that famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer died at the age of 104 years old. His work in the new capital Brasília is pictured on this 100 Cruzados banknote from 1986 (P211). On the back of the note you can see Catetinho and the Palácio da Alvorado (Palace of Dawn). More info from banknotes.com:
Catetinho (designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer) is the first building ever built in Brasilia. Catetinho is the house where [president] Juscelino Kubitschek lived while the city was built from 1956 to 1960. Brasilia is one of the only cities in the world that was completely planned, and the building of the city in just 4 short years is a first in the world. Catetinho is now open to the public, and has been turned into a mini-museum about the city's history and the life of Juscelino Kubitschek. Palácio da Alvorada (Palace of Dawn) is the official residence of the President of Brazil. The palace was designed, along with the rest of the city of Brasília, by Oscar Niemeyer and inaugurated in 1958.
Its face value is $5, but an 1892 bank note issued by the National Bank of Creede could sell for $90,000 or more when it is auctioned next week [SB: 13 December 2012]. The extremely rare note is likely to generate a good deal of interest from collectors, especially those in Colorado, said Paul Song, director of coins and medals for the auctioneer, Bonhams of New York City. Song said Bonhams' value estimate of $70,000 to $90,000 is just an educated guess, because no other bank notes from the long-defunct Creede bank are known to exist.
If only more people cleaned up their attic we would have much more of these beauties available perhaps.
Do you think you need state of the art equipment and the latest technology to counterfeit modern banknotes? Think again.
A home-made tool resembling a meat tenderiser is being used by counterfeiters to create a security feature on fake 100 yuan banknotes, police say after studying almost 4,000 of such bills seized this year. "An investigation found that an instrument with spikes was used to pound images of the counterfeit notes so that the bills would have an embossed effect," a police source said. (...) more bogus HK$1,000 bills were seized this year, police said. A total of 943 were seized in the first 10 months of the year, compared with 328 for the whole of last year and 220 in 2010. A total of 726 fake HK$100 notes was seized in the first 10 months of this year, compared with 1,806 for the whole of last year.
So I was browsing through the podcast section of iTunes yesterday when I stumbled upon the BBC program The History of the World in 100 Objects. I love shows like that. Especially when I found out one of the objects used in the series, is a Ming banknote from 14th century China. They talk about the history of banknotes and how the first ones like these were used. Really interesting, even if you already know most of the story like a lot of collectors probably do. You can listen to the episode via iTunes or on the BBC website. The banknote being discussed is this one in the British Museum.
Norway has announced on 4 December 2012 that they started a project to design new banknotes. This will be their 8th series of banknotes. The main reason for designing the new series is to enhance the security of the notes. They expect it will take several years before the new notes will be issued in Norway. The first step is choose a theme for the new series. Once the theme has been approved, the national bank will choose the main elements of the banknotes' design. You can read more about this announcement in the press release by the Norges Bank.
Dutch organization MPO will hold a trade fair in Wassenaar (near The Hague) on 9 December 2012. There will be stamps, coins and (most important for us) banknotes. You can also get free valuation of your banknotes. A couple of times a year they also organise auctions which can be a real bargain hunt. The catalogue of the latest auction can be found here and the winning bids can be found here. Some really good deals!
According to this site with news on Thai and other Asian banknotes, the new 20 Baht from Thailand (series 16) should be issued tomorrow 5 December 2012. I have no news about this at the moment and the Bank of Thailand is also silent on the topic. As is stated in this press release, the size and colors of the new banknote will be like series 15 (pictured below).
If there are any new developments, I will of course report on it. It would be nice to have a new Thai banknote!
More info: all series of Thai banknotes on this great site of the Bank of Thailand.
Could these be the new banknotes from Libya? There are several shown in this video which I found on Jay's World Banknotes.
Apparently the following images appear on the notes:
1 dinar - Front: Unknown. Back: Flag of Libya and peace doves. 5 dinars - Front: Ottoman Clock Tower. Back: Zeus Temple in Cyrene. 10 dinars - Front: Portrait of Omar Al Mukhtar. Back: Al Mukhtar horsemen. 20 dinars - Front: Al Ateeq mosque in the city of Oujlah in the oasis. Back: Traditional school in Ghdamis. 50 dinars - Front: Italian Lighthouse of Sede Khrebeech. Back: Stone arch in Tadrart Acacus.
Update 6 December 2012: Banknotenews has published more pictures on their site. It's however pretty clear that these are other banknotes than the ones in the video. The Central Bank of Libya has put up a link to the above video claiming it's the Deputy Governor discussing the new banknotes (or that's what I got after translating the Arab text of the popup in Google Translate). So which one is the correct new set? More and more sites claim that it will be in fact the set below which will be issued in the beginning of 2013.
Remember when I wrote about the upcoming new banknotes in Fiji last week? And their plans to replace the image of Queen Elizabeth II with local flowers and perhaps the head of somebody else? Well, apparently not everyone is wild about this idea. The local chiefs have protested the decision, stating that she is still the queen of Fiji and has been given the title of highest chief in the country.
Still another 8 days to go before we are sure what the new notes will look like...
Hello, I'm Steven Bron and welcome to my blog on banknotes! Here you can find: breaking news, background articles and of course my personal collection (world notes or at least one from each country, commemorative notes and polymer notes).
On 25 December 2012 the National Bank of Tajikistan introduced new 5 and 10 Somoni banknotes. The design is the same as the previous versions (P15 and P16) but in the new design a Kinegram stripe has been introduced on the front. The notes of 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 Somoni already have a Kinegram stripe.
According to 
The 
On 15 January 2013 Transnistria will issue new banknotes. The design will stay the same but the notes will have additional security features. One of these feautures will be a 
I've compiled a list of a lot of security feautures which can be found on banknotes these days. These aren't all security features known today but as a first try, it's fairly complete. The list will be updated when possible.
With the issuance of the new Moroccan 25 Dirhams scheduled for this month, 
The front of the banknote features an 
The Indonesian government has announced plans to reduce the number of zeros on the rupiah by three beginning in 2014. The redenomination will simplify payment processes in a national currency upon which many people already ignore the last three zeroes.
Jersey
MRI 
Well, here’s a surprise nobody could see coming (yes, I’m using irony here). 
Banknote printer 
Today Fiji announced the design for the new banknotes. Queen Elizabeth II has indeed been removed but not replaced by dictators or other people as 
In 
Vietnam will withdraw the 10.000 and 20.000 Dong from 1 January 2013. This has sparked a trade in these banknotes in Vietnam. People want to buy them as a souvenir or because they think the notes will be worth much more in the future. They're being offered sometimes at four times the face value. Some people claim these banknotes are so popular because of the beautiful colors: "the VND10,000 paper note dubbed “The Queen of all VND banknotes” symbolizes luck thanks to its bright shade of red – a favorite color during Tet holiday."
According to 
The 
Do you think you need state of the art equipment and the latest technology to counterfeit modern banknotes? Think again.
So I was browsing through the podcast section of iTunes yesterday when I stumbled upon the BBC program 
Norway has 
Dutch organization 
