Fancy Toilet Paper From Yugoslavia (500 Billion Dinara)

Back with another fun monetary oddity. Interestingly, I discovered this one by total accident while I was browsing one of my go-to numismatic shops!

Allow me to introduce you to the 500 Billion Dinara

(public domain)

What a beauty! Just look at all those sexy zeros 😄

Much like other notes I have shown you with stupid high numbers, this note is the result of hyperinflation and was pretty much a fancy piece of toilet paper the moment it came out 🚽

This is the "highest" Dinara bill ever issued. It came out in 1993 by Yugoslavia and lasted about three months before the country re-denominated the dinar for the fifth time on 1 January 1994, at a ratio of 1 billion to 1.

This was a really... interesting time for the country. To give you an example, workers had to rush out and spend their wages the same day it was paid otherwise they lost serious value just the next day due to hyperinflation. Item prices were literally changing numerous times the same day. Fun times

Some shops, instead of rewriting their prices several times a day, started pricing goods in "bods" (points), often equivalent to hard currency such as one Deutschmark. The winter of 1993 was particularly hard for pensioners; if a monthly pension was spent immediately, it was still barely enough to buy three litres of milk. Many people relied on connections to friends and family abroad (who could provide hard currency) or in the countryside (who could grow food) source

Fortunately today our inflation hasn't hit these crazy levels yet 😄

Here's how the note looks from the other side:

634b1b7e69dfb3.25779365-original.jpg
source

The guy on the portrait is some Serbian poet called Jovan Jovanović Zmaj

Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Јовановић Змаj, pronounced [jɔ̌v̞an jɔv̞ǎːnɔv̞it͡ɕ zmâj]; 24 November 1833 – 1 June 1904) was a Serbian poet

Jovanović worked as a physician; he wrote in many poetry genres, including love, lyric, patriotic, political, and youth, but he remains best known for his children's poetry. His nursery rhymes have entered the Serbian national consciousness and people sing them to their children without knowing who wrote them. Jovanović also translated the works of some of the great poets, such as Russians Lermontov and Pushkin, Germans Goethe and Heine, and the American Longfellow. source

Anyways, I can't wait to receive this piece yet. I think I'll have it this Tuesday or Wednesday and I'll probably do a photoshoot with my other fun hyperinflation bills 😆😆

In case you wonder, I paid about 5$. Becoming a billionaire was never so cheap 😄🎉

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