What, do I want...? What millionaire... ?
I remember when we were all billionaires.
I have already told you two stories about the banknotes that I collected in my childhood and that I now keep in my cottage.
The story of my grandfather's banknotes, from the beginning of World War II, if you haven't seen it, it's here.
Or a story from my childhood before the civil war in Yugoslavia, before 1990, which you can watch here.
And I have one more story left that I want to share with you.
The story of banknotes from the time of hyperinflation in Yugoslavia (that is, what is left of it), in the period 1992-1994.
During that period, we lived like beggars, but we were billionaires.
Banknotes were printed daily. Sometimes the value of the paper and ink exceeded the value of that same banknote.
We sought salvation from inflation in the exchange of banknotes for the then German mark.
In the course of one day, you could buy 100 DM for a million dinar banknote, and not even 10 DM the next day. In a week, those million dinars were not worth even 5 pfennigs...
How confused do you think the people were with the amounts of banknotes, when different denominations, with the same characters on them, had the same year, and often a thousand times (or a hundred thousand times or a million times) different value.
Many people then, by mistake (their own or someone else's), were left without their current banknotes.
We had to distinguish the banknotes by color and characters, not by amounts...
It was difficult for the shopkeepers who had to explain to the elderly how their orange 50 million dinar banknote with a picture of a little girl is now worth nothing and that they now need a red bill with a picture of the same girl worth a billion dinars to pay their bills...
At that time, we put many scientists, famous historical figures and writers on those banknotes.
I think the champion was the image of Nikola Tesla, which appeared on several banknotes in 1993, in denominations of five thousand, five million and ten billion.
In one year, the value of the banknote with his image dropped two million times.
Imagine what the value of a 10 dinar banknote was, when it was issued with a denomination of five hundred thousand dinars. Fifty thousand times less value?
It was cheaper to warm yourself by burning 10 dinar bills in stoves than paying electricity bills or buying firewood...
Even the banknote designers had no idea what to put on the new bills, so they just changed their color and denominations...
We had the blue and green Dositej Obradovic, with a hundred times difference in denominations, the brown and orange Karadjordja Petrovic with the same hundred times difference in amount, and the blue and yellow Jovan Cvijic, with a thousand times difference in denominations.
Blue and brown Petar Pertovic Njegos, had a difference of only fifty times...
In addition to the mentioned historical figures, Vuk Karadjic, Mihajlo Pupin, Milos Obrenovic, Djura Jakšić, Ivo Andrić also had their own banknotes.
And on many denominations there were figures of boys, girls, young women and young men.
And all of them together, in its denomination of five hundred billion dinars, was surpassed by the famous poet Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj from 1993.
I'm not going to tell you anything in detail about that hyperinflation, like the life we led (unless someone wants to hear some of my anecdotes from that period, I'll be happy to share them in the comments), now I just wanted to show you those paper documents in photos billions of dollars that we "struggled" for in those years.
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