Looking for your thought in banknotes collecting

If you have your 2 cents, please feel free to post and share your comment/opinions on this post here. Much appreciated.

What is your opinions when come to collecting banknotes issued by disputed territories that have very few international recognition, such as like

Abkhazia

Transniestr or Transnistria

South Ossetian (no banknote issued yet)

And perhaps few others that I am not aware of. I am only referring to existing and ongoing disputed territories only.

Thanking you in advance.

😁

An interesting area to collect.

Would you also collect notes from past disputed territories - Biafra is one that comes to mind, or North Ingria.

Some of them could turn out to be quite rare, especially if overprinting is used to create an issue quickly.

Hibernia

An interesting area to collect.

Would you also collect notes from past disputed territories - Biafra is one that comes to mind, or North Ingria.

 

Some of them could turn out to be quite rare, especially if overprinting is used to create an issue quickly.

Dear Hibernia

Yes, I would and I have few of the notes from Biafra too. I just want to know what's the general feeling for banknotes issued by a disputed territory like Abkhazia. It appears that the 500 and the 25 apsar notes issued are not legal tender at a retail business as they are using Russian rubles at the moment. These apsra notes are more like a collectable item.  

Since we use baht and satang here, I will give my 2 satang.

As Hibernia wrote , it could make for interesting collecting to have examples of banknotes from “disputed” lands. If you think about it, we collectors are amateur museum curators preserving stuff for the future and with that, political overtones should stay out of our collecting. If you dive in too deep, you begin to over analyze and then start to wonder if you should collect anything. An example of what I mean here is the situation with Taiwan. One could argue that Taiwan is a “disputed” land, but very different situation from say Transnistria. I personally like the notes of Somaliland. That is another “disputed” land. 

Just like anything that is collectible, you need to focus on what makes you happy to be part of the group of people preserving current artifacts (banknotes in this case) for the future generations to see.

An interesting area to collect.

Ahkai I'm sure there is a small, yet growing, group of collectors who will be after $ (currency) from nations in disputed territories (+ the aftermath). I think the upcoming fall exhibit at the Toronto AGO  Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest will appeal to a lot of these collectors. But I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of fans will simply be history buffs & not collectors at all. I think it would be a real challenge to assemble (source) a collection from strictly lands that have been disputed simply due to the logistics (of whether banknotes ever got off the ground) for some regions.  

I believe a larger contingent of collectors will be after notes with nations who have undergone a name change. This would satisfy the disputed nations criteria but also provide a much broader scope of nations to choose from.  I bought this Rwanda-Burundi note (a nation which lasted 2 years 1960-1962) a few years ago:

I made a list of the top 5 colonies a few years ago on my Money Market page.   Some of these colonies had rebellions (or revolutions) while others transformed peacefully.  It is obviously dated (no Biafra or Rwanda-Burundi) but it I had to make a commitment & put something there.  I know it lacks many German, Italian & Portuguese colonies (to name a few) but I just thought it important to put something there since I discovered how popular these notes are. 

BTW: I think a lot of Austrian/German Notgeld collectors look upon some of their notes as protest money (protesting government policies & issues of the day in their images).

This is one of my favorite areas to collect! I like the stuff that's just a bit different. I would love to get my hands on local currency as well. 

dkallen78

I would love to get my hands on local currency as well. 

I collect Polish notgeld which is printed in Polish or bilingual in Polish and another language.

Hibernia

I collect Polish notgeld which is printed in Polish or bilingual in Polish and another language.

I like notgeld, but I can't stand the idea of owning an incomplete set, so I keep my eyes open from time to time and try to find good deals. I don't know why, but I really like Spanish Franco currency so I want to get some Spanish Civil War notgeld/emergency money from that era.

I agree - the goal of collecting is to complete the collection!

With Polish notgeld, printed in Polish (issued in places which ended up in Poland after the first world war afaik), there are relatively few notes to collect, so I think that it is possible to complete a collection, by issuer at least.

I completed my Nagorno Karabakh collection! That might have been the easiest =P

dkallen78

I completed my Nagorno Karabakh collection! That might have been the easiest =P

I got them too. Only purchased them last year for a dollar+ each, plus the specimen too. The specimen set was a bit more expensive. I am a bit disappointed with these notes. I was told by an Armenian dealer that they were just a novelty and were not circulating in the territory when they were first issued back in the early 2000s. Also the face value may not be possible to have any purchasing power in the territory either. I could be wrong on this. I was aware that when it was first reported and these notes were selling around $10 per set. I read an article that this project was started by someone from NY USA. 
 

I wonder if we have any Armenian friends here?

I can't authoritatively confirm or deny what you heard, but I've heard the same thing. I thought it was similar to the Abkhazia note in that it was more to raise awareness than to circulate 

I'm a bit of a fan of unauthorized money, so to speak.  To my knowledge the only two currently unrecognized countries/territories that have genuinely circulated money of their own issue are Transnistria and Somaliland, though I do not claim to know everything so I wouldn't be surprised if there were another arguable instance.

I read similar things, that the Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh dram was pegged to the Armenian dram, but in reality it never circulated and was made for collectors; the Armenian dram of course filled the need for circulating money.

I think I've even read that the Somaliland shilling is sufficiently devalued - though still evidently more stable than the officially recognized Somali shilling - that in practice it's mostly traded digitally.  I can't find the fascinating article on this I read a while back, but https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/africa/somaliland-s-world-leading-move-towards-a-cashless-culture-1.781506 is a decent read.

Talking about Somaliland, is this a legit issue?

I have a feeling that it is not, at least not the way the commemorative text were printed on the note. In my opinion, no issuing authority, especially those who have the legal authority or even by force, would issue the note that has the serial numbers and signatures partly covered up.

To me, this is more like a 'home made' item.

That's an interesting question, the en/wikipedia article mentions this issue but also comments that it's unclear who is responsible for the overprint, whether government or merchant looking to sell souvenirs.  Unmentioned in that article, or anywhere else I found online, is who is the original printer for Somaliland notes.

Considering the very low value of the banknote used, and that the Baanka Somaliland government page acknowledges that banknotes are of course printed abroad, it wouldn't be that surprising if improvised or “homemade” means were used to make more-or-less official overprints.  I have to imagine that in 1996 the Somaliland government was working with whatever they had, and probably still are.  In a cruel twist of fate, Somaliland seemingly does a better job of governing their territory than the UN-recognized Somalia does the rest of the country, yet lack of international recognition essentially leaves them to rot.  Like a forgotten weed growing between the cracks, Somaliland persists over 30 years later.  May a sunnier day rise on them soon.

Wonder if there was a change of government or staff in the mint. The new team probably tried to mutilate or make a point to the previous team by doing what they did.

Here are two of my notes that have been ‘Home made’.

Some called these No Entry notes 😁