10 000 Karbovantsiv

Yavornyk was one of several private Ukrainian firms that issued their own token currency — known as surohaty hroshei, or money surrogates — during the acute cash shortage of the early 1990s, when the Soviet ruble was collapsing and Ukraine had not yet stabilized its own monetary system. These were not government-sanctioned instruments but quasi-commercial scrip, accepted within a limited geographic or commercial sphere and tolerated by authorities who had no practical alternative to offer.

The denomination itself — 10,000 karbovantsiv — reflects the hyperinflation of that transitional period. Ukraine's karbovanets lost value so rapidly between 1992 and 1996 that five-digit denominations became routine before the currency was retired entirely in September 1996, replaced by the hryvnia at a rate of 100,000 to 1.