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10 000 Dollars - Hell Bank Note

Issuer Hell Bank (冥都銀行)
Year
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Composition Paper
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Obverse lettering 10000 HELL BANK NOTE 10000
冥都銀行
NO. 5101988 H
10000 壹萬圓 陰冥通用
DOLLARS 冥府紙幣
(Signature) (Signature)
10000 10000
TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS
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Reverse lettering 壹萬 HELL BANK NOTE 壹萬
10000
DOLLARS
行長 玉皇
副行長 閻羅
壹萬 壹萬
冥銀
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Comments

Hell Bank Notes are ritual joss paper printed for burning at funerals and ancestral ceremonies, particularly in Chinese, Vietnamese, and broader East Asian Buddhist and Taoist traditions. The denomination on this example — 10,000 dollars — reflects a logic of abundance: offerings burned in the physical world are understood to transfer wealth to the deceased in the afterlife. The numbers are purely symbolic and escalate freely, with some notes running into the billions.

Not legal tender anywhere, never issued by any monetary authority, and outside the scope of conventional numismatics — but collected widely as ethnographic objects.

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