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5 000 000 000 000 000 - Hell Bank Note

Issuer Heaven and Earth Bank Limited (天地銀行有限公司)
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Composition Paper
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Reverse description Printed entirely in red on a pale underprint. A detailed vignette of a hillside palatial complex — resembling the Potala Palace — occupies the left-centre field. The denomination '50000000億' appears at upper left and lower left. A column of Chinese Buddhist sutra text ('鈔票經') runs vertically at right, with the inscription 'HELLBANKNONE' along the top margin and two red seals at lower right.
Reverse lettering HELLBANKNONE
50000000億
鈔票經
洋票要念洋票經
張張洋票如文銀
洋票當中一尊佛
四四方方放光明
五金山上尊菩提
知王大帝摩訶西
南無阿彌陀佛
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Comments

Hell Bank Notes are ritual paper money burned as offerings in Chinese folk religious practice, intended to provide deceased relatives with spending money in the afterlife. The issuing "bank" named on these notes is purely ceremonial — no such institution exists or ever existed in any legal sense. The astronomical denomination is deliberate: inflation in the afterlife is assumed to be severe, and larger figures are considered more generous offerings.

These are manufactured goods, not monetary instruments, and have no numismatic standing. Collectors occasionally acquire them as curiosities of material culture.

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