The summer of 1984, when I was eight years old, I spent in the countryside with my grandfather (my mother's father).
I was big enough that I wouldn't be watched and controlled all day and not big enough to help with the chores around the property.
I had all the freedom to play all day.
My grandfather, although he had many children, did not seem like a man who loves children.
He was quite strict and mostly set up when he was around me.
Or maybe he seemed frowning to me because of the wrinkles on his face, under the hat he only took off for lunch, when he went to church, when he bathed and when he slept.
He often forbade me to enter his room in the house where he lived a single life, separated from his wife.
But that's why he didn't prevent me from playing in the yard and entering the basement of the house.
And in the basement of the house, what could be found...
I was small then, so all the tools, decorations, old glasses and dishes didn't seem interesting to me.
My attention was drawn to a small brown leather purse, hanging on a nail in the corner of the darkened room. And in it, paper money.
For me then, an incredible treasure, because you already know, I loved playing with bills and exchanging them with strangers I met on vacations, as I wrote in this post.
A small leather purse with old Serbian money...
I asked my grandfather: "Where did you get this money", and he just shrugged his shoulders, waved his hand and told me: "I'll tell you another time, go play now, take them freely, they don't mean anything to me for a long time...".
When I went home at the end of the summer, I had to throw away the leather purse, because it was too old, ruined by the humidity in the basement, and I took the bills with me, eagerly anticipating the Christmas holidays when we were supposed to go to my grandfather again.
Since the end of that summer in 1984, for 40 years now, I have considered that paper money as my only collectible treasure 😃
Not for the sheer value I might be able to get at some eBay auctions (like $10-15 per bill), but for the story of how my grandfather's money ended up in a musty leather bag in the basement...
Unfortunately, that fall my grandfather fell ill and passed away. He never got around to telling me his story.
In the years that followed, when I was a little older, I heard the story of my grandfather's life from my mother.
He was born in 1904. He was exactly 10 years old when the First World War began. If you were ever interested in the First World War and read something historical about that period, you know that at the beginning of the war, two big famous battles were fought in Serbia, Kolubarska and Cerska.
Unfortunately for my grandfather, the village where he was born and where he lived was located between the areas where those battles were fought.
Too small for the war, but big enough to travel alone, his father, and my great-grandfather, sent him to his uncle, in Kosovo, in Prizren.
My grandfather's uncle (and my great-grandfather) was a respectable citizen of Prizren in those years and was able to give my grandfather a quality education.
When the grandfather returned to his native village at the age of 16, he found an empty house.
He was left without anyone or anything. Alone in this world...
You're still there, you haven't run away from fasting? Don't worry, I will shorten the story of grandfather, I won't tell you his whole life 😉
As a rarely educated man, grandfather got a job easily and quickly (he worked as a director in post office and as a surveyor in the municipality).
He found a girlfriend and got married. They had many children, and by working hard at two jobs, at the age of 35 he acquired a large property, a lot of land, he built a house, the same one in the basement of which I found a bag of bills and acquired a fortune...
A fortune in paper that could fit in that leather bag...
In the years between the two world wars, a 100 Serbian dinar note could buy two pairs of oxen (4 adult cattle). I found over 1000 dinars in this bag, which means that for the amount of dinars that grandfather had there before the beginning of World War II, he could have bought a total of 40 adult oxen, a real big herd...
The World War II began and with the occupation of the Yugoslavia by Germany, new money was immediately introduced in all parts of the country, for each area by currency, which will be used in that area.
The old dinar of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in Serbia, was replaced 1:1 with the new Serbian dinar (this "treasure" of mine).
That new dinar was used to pay German soldiers, to buy and pay for goods, but it could not be used to pay outside of Serbia (e.g. in Bosnia, Croatia...).
There is a story that the German command printed the banknotes on mobile printing presses that they transported in trucks. When they come somewhere and need to pay for something, they print as much money as they need and take goods from the people, leaving them with worthless paper.
Sound familiar?
How many dollars do they print today?
So how much do they need.
A billion, for example... Can you? You can 🙂
And that worthless paper, which my grandfather received in exchange for the same amount of (valuable) dinars before the war, he was bitter, put it in a leather bag and left it in the basement for 40 years, until I found it.
A large number of banknotes that I found were completely destroyed by moisture, but I managed to save a few of the least damaged ones.
These banknotes were printed at the beginning of the war, so I am sure that they are not the ones printed in mobile printers in trucks.
The banknotes I have saved are denominations of:
- 20 dinars, printed on May 1, 1941, only 24 days after the bombing of Belgrade (April 6, 1941) and 13 days after the country's capitulation (April 17, 1941)
- 50 dinars, printed in August 1941.
- Like the new denomination of 50 dinars, printed in May 1942, apparently on German, higher quality paper that did not deteriorate like the banknotes from 1941. The 50 dinars banknote from 1942 has a German design, sharp and disciplined lines, visually without any similarity with a bill of 50 dinars from us one year earlier..
I keep these bills in a dry and dark place, and I hope to wait until 2041 and 2042, so that I can check their value when they turn 100 years old.
Although damaged like this, they will hardly have any great value, except that they have value for me, because, damaged like this, they bring me back to the time of my childhood and further to the life of my grandfather in the first half of the 20th century.
I hope you found something interesting in this story of mine, that I didn't overwhelm you with too much grandfather talk, and that you like my collectibles.
Thank you for stopping by my post and I hope you enjoyed the photos and the story I shared with you
All photos are my property, taken with a mobile phone