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500 000 000 Dollars
| Issuer | Hell Bank (冥都銀行) |
|---|---|
| Year | |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Vignette at right of a robed deity figure (the Jade Emperor) in traditional imperial regalia against a full moon; to the left, two large koi carp leap amid stylised waves rendered in vivid polychrome. Upper and lower panels carry Chinese legends in red on a yellow guilloche underprint, with two facsimile seals and manuscript signatures flanking the central vignette. |
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| Obverse lettering | 伍億圓 冥都銀行 伍億圓 地府通用冥幣 500000000 Y A 92 - 08686 |
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| Comments |
Hell Bank notes — printed as ceremonial paper offerings to be burned at funerals and ancestral rituals throughout Chinese communities worldwide — occupy a genuinely odd corner of notaphily. They are collected seriously, but they were never legal tender in any jurisdiction, never issued by any financial authority, and were designed from the outset to be destroyed by fire. The 冥都銀行 imprint translates loosely as "Netherworld Capital Bank," a deliberate echo of formal banking language applied to the afterlife economy of traditional Chinese folk religion.
The denomination arms race in hell money is its own phenomenon — inflation in the spirit world, apparently, has been catastrophic.