Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
50 Yuan - Hell Banknote
| Issuer | 冥都銀行有限公司 (Bank of Hades Ltd.) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1999 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 160 x 70 mm |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Pale green monochrome design with a central landscape vignette of mountainous terrain and a waterfall. Left panel carries an ornate columnar guilloche border with the inscription WUSHI YUAN in a central medallion and numeral 50 at the base. The date 1999 appears in a diamond-shaped panel at the lower centre, with multilingual text at lower right. |
| Reverse lettering | HELLBANKNOTE 50 WUSHI YUAN 1999 |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Hell banknotes are votive offerings burned at Chinese funerals and ancestor veneration ceremonies so that the deceased may have spending money in the afterlife. The practice adapts an ancient tradition of burning paper goods — itself a substitute for the earlier burning of actual valuables — and by the late twentieth century had produced an entire parallel economy of ghost currency, complete with issuing "banks," denominations, and serial numbers mimicking real monetary instruments.
The Bank of Hades imprint became one of the most widely reproduced formats in the genre. The 1999 date places this within a period of significant commercial expansion in the manufacture and export of spirit money, particularly out of Hong Kong and Guangdong.