The Bank of China in Hong Kong put on sale commemorative Olympic-themed $20 bills today. Only 4 million notes will be issued. The two sides look like this:
Pricing for the sets range from HKD $138 for a single note to $1, 388 for a 35-in-1 uncut sheet.
I know very little about the hobby and industry of collecting commemorative notes, but exchanging $138 for $20 is 7-folds the product's monetary value, guaranteeing that these notes will never circulate publicly - ie, they're useless money. By some accounts, the immediate aftermarket already has these bills priced at 5x their purchase value, or 35x their monetary face value. And furthermore, 4 MILLION of these are issued, in a city of only 7 million people. If distributed equally, more than half of the city's residents could get their hands on one, or each household could potentially have 2-3. When viewed at from this angle, the supply-and-demand laws don't seem to justify the bill's value nor queuing up over a 48-hour period like this:
In any case, so are the economics of craze.
On a last side note, a couple weeks ago China also issued a new 10 Yuan bill that looks like this:
And yes, both the Chinese and Hong Kong bills feature the Bird's Nest stadium by my boys HdM, but they still have a ways to go before overtaking Corb's throne on printed money.
1 comment:
Oh those look nice, thanks for posting! My dad's a collector and I've seen a lot of different notes from all over the world when I get the chance to flip through his collection. I find it quiet interesting to see the design changes in the notes over time. It's like a piece of history.
Post a Comment