The new note has a portrait of the Scottish novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott on the front together with an image of The Mound, the historic head office of the Bank of Scotland. The date on the note reads 1 June 2016. The back of the note shows the Glenfinnan Viaduct (yes, the one pictured in the Harry Potter movies) with a steam locomotive hauling a heritage tourist train. The locomotive is a preserved Stanier "Black 5", which was designed for the London, Midland and Scottish railway and is often seen on the West Highland line.
The new note is designed by De la Rue and incorporates the same security features we saw in the last 5-pound note: the "window effect" which will be built into the windows of the image of The Mound, and the "rolling bar" metallic ink which changes color as the note is moved. A new feature is the "tactile emboss" (created by a series of raised dots) which will aid the visually impaired.
I'm usually not a huge fan of a brown-green colorscheme but this one looks rather good. Maybe because of the nice train...
From the BBC website an interesting article on the discovery of vast amounts of old Russian banknotes.
"A group of explorers in Russia have found around a billion roubles in old Soviet money at an abandoned mine, but it's all completely worthless.
The group from Saint Petersburg, who publish a blog on abandoned sites across Russia, came across the money after following rumours that large quantities of cash had been dumped in old missile silos near Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomolskaya Pravda news website reports. After travelling for several hours across rough terrain in Russia's Vladimir region, they found the mine literally overflowing with cash.
The site contains an estimated one billion roubles ($18m; £13.5m at current exchange rates, or $33.3m at the "official" Soviet rate in 1991) in Soviet Union banknotes of various denominations issued between 1961 and 1991, all no longer legal tender in the Russian Federation. The mine had been flooded in recent years, leaving what was essentially a swamp of banknotes bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin, the explorers' YouTube channel shows."
What a find! You can read the rest of the article here. The video of this discovery can be viewed below.
The Banco Central del Uruguay has announced that a new polymer commemorative note of 50 peso will be issued to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Central Bank. A total of 10 million notes will be issued.
No word yet on the issue date. The Central Bank was established on 6 July 1967 but an issue around that date seems a bit soon.
As mentioned earlier the Banque Central de Madagascar is preparing to issue a new series of banknotes. The series will contain the denominations of 100-, 200-, 500-, 1,000-, 2,000-, 5,000-, 10,000-, and 20,000-ariary.
It has now been made clear that the denominations of 2,000-, 5,000-, 10,000-, and 20,000-ariary will be issued in July 2017. The denominations of 100-, 200-, 500-, 1,000-ariary will be issued in September 2017. The current banknotes will remain legal tender.
To celebrate this event the Norges Bank has begun a campaign featuring the video below which is 'celebrating' the new 200-kroner note which has the image of a cod on the front.
The video features the trio KLM along with a certain 'DJ Codfather' singing the song "Torsken kommer II – Torske kroner nå" which roughly translates into something like "the cod is coming". The rest of the text is more difficult to translate into English according to Bank President Øystein Olsen.
I wish more central banks made bizarre funny videos like this!
Lots of Swiss news these days. We've just been presented with the new 20-francs note. And the first note of the new series, the 50-francs note, was recently awarded Banknote of the Year 2016.
But now there is more news as the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has announced that the third note in the series will be issued from 18 October 2017 (and if they keep up with the tradition likely presented around 11 August 2017). The 10-francs note will have Time as its theme and will be yellow of colour.
Anyone expecting an expensive Swiss watch somewhere on the note?
Coinweek reports: "On April 28, President Donald Trump appointed Jovita Carranza as the 44th Treasurer of the United States. She takes over the position most recently held by Rosa “Rosie” Gumataotao Rios, who served under President Obama from July 28, 2009 to July 8 of last year.
In something of a federal tradition, Carranza is the 16th consecutive woman to hold the post; the first, Georgia Neese Clark, was appointed under President Truman in 1949."
It is unclear for now when her signature will grace the Federal Reserve notes.
Canadian police is warning the public for a new type of counterfeiting involving the 5-dollar notes.
In a nutshell: "Police say counterfeiters are removing the clear panel near the side of the bill, which also contains two shiny, embedded holographic strips. The clear plastic is being replaced with tape, and tinfoil is being used as a substitute for the holograms.
Investigators suspect the real $5 panels are being repurposed to create higher-denomination counterfeits, while the cobbled-together $5 bills are being put back into circulation. The result is two Frankenstein-like sets of bills, with each containing elements of real and fake banknotes."
I wonder if we will see these kind of notes show up on sites like eBay advertised as "very rare misprints!".
The top note is counterfeit, the real note is the bottom one.
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has presented its new 20-francs banknote yesterday. This is the second note of the new series after the 50-francs note which was issued last year.
The theme of the red-colored note is creativity, expressed through the key motif of Light. On the front we see a hand which holds a prism through which light is dispersed into various colours. The motif of light is echoed in the constellations over the globe on the front. The background of the note is reminiscent of a kaleidoscope in which colourful patterns are produced through reflected light. The motif of light also plays an important role on the security strip: night-time light emissions are overlaid on a map of Switzerland and the surrounding regions, and the distances between various celestial bodies and the earth are listed in light seconds.
The back of the note has more elements connected with Light. Creativity, as can be experienced at a film festival, is expressed through the projection of light onto a screen. Light reveals the colour of the butterfly’s wings and allows us to behold the rich diversity of nature. The lines on the back of the 20-franc note portray an iris, which regulates the amount of light entering the human eye.
The new 20-francs note will be issued from 17 May 2017.
I think this is a beautiful banknote and a serious contender to win the title of Banknote of the Year again after the 50-francs note won the award for 2016.
The Maldives Monetary Authority has presented its new 5-rufiyaa note which was announced recently. The new note was designed by Abdulla Nashaath who also designed the current 'Randhiha Faheh' series which has been in circulation since 2016.
The new note has the same design theme and is the same size as the other notes in the series. It has a rendering of popular Maldivian footballer Ali Ashfaq (nicknamed Dhangadey) without his face on the front of the note.
The new note will go into circulation in July 2017.
It's now looks like the two new notes will be issued in October 2017. One of the notes will be a polymer note, according to the central bank’s First Deputy Chairman Georgy Luntovsky.
On a side note: if Russia was still a part of the USSR we would have seen quite different banknotes I think, marking the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution (or November Revolution in the New Style) in October/November of this year.
Update 11-10-2017: the notes will be presented on 12 October 2017 and could be issued before the end of the year.
The Banque Central de Madagascar is preparing to issue a new series which will include a new banknote of 20,000 ariary at the end of 2017. This would be the highest denomination in the country. The banknotes of Madagascar have always been quite good looking so I'm curious to see what they will come up with it.
Certain sites report that the new highest value note will look like the one shown below but this is obviously a colored and photoshopped 10,000-ariary note so it's completely fake.
The Maldives Monetary Authority introduced its beautiful new series in January 2016 without the 5-rufiyaa note which was going to be replaced by a coin. It now appears that the lowest denomination will be reintroduced after all with a new polymer banknote.
This new banknote will probably be introduced around 10 May 2017 but it is unclear when it will become available although it will not take a long time. Below is the only partial picture published for now.
My apologies for the lack of updates the last few weeks. I was on holiday with my wife, daughter and my parents-in-law. Destination? New York, New York! The city so nice, they named it twice. And it wás very nice. The city is quite literally bursting with energy and it truly never sleeps. The last time we were there in 2009 the WTC-site was still heavily under construction but last week we could enjoy the view from the Freedom Tower. Another fantastic experience was the NY Yankees game we visited. Such a nice atmosphere in the stadium and such a great game. We were lucky to witness the fantastic comeback against the Baltimore Orioles on 28 April in which the Yankees came back from 9-1 down to a 14-11 victory in the 10th inning.
Although I searched for it, I couldn't really find a brick-and-mortar banknote store so I couldn't get a nice souvenir like the banknote below. Ah well, I now had to settle for some new fountain pen ink from the Fountain Pen Hospital. Unlucky for me they didn't have this ink whick would have been a perfect combination of my two hobbies but a nice color like 'Manhattan Blue' is also perfect as a souvenir.
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).
The Bank of Scotland has announced it will issue a new polymer 10-pound note in the Autumn of 2017.
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