Hell bank notes are ritual paper money burned as offerings in Chinese funerary and ancestor veneration practices, intended to provide the deceased with wealth in the afterlife. They are not issued by any monetary authority and have never functioned as currency. The "Bank of Hades" imprint and the signatures of "Yen Loon" (the Jade Emperor) and "Yu Wong" are theatrical conventions of the form, not references to real institutions or individuals.
Of no numismatic value in the strict sense, though they are collected as examples of folk printing and cultural material.
Hell bank notes are ritual paper money burned as offerings in Chinese funerary and ancestor veneration practices, intended to provide the deceased with wealth in the afterlife. They are not issued by any monetary authority and have never functioned as currency. The "Bank of Hades" imprint and the signatures of "Yen Loon" (the Jade Emperor) and "Yu Wong" are theatrical conventions of the form, not references to real institutions or individuals.
Of no numismatic value in the strict sense, though they are collected as examples of folk printing and cultural material.