Germany 1910 and 1920 notes

Today, let me share these 2 Germany notes.

The first one is Germany Reichsbantnote 1000 issed in 1910.























The second one is Bundert Mark 100 issued on 1920.
























These notes are pieces of artwork by itself. Look at the complexity and details of the notes. Amazing.

Pay peanut and get monkey

This is a 1980 stamp issued by China, the first one in China Zodiac series.

I bought 2 pieces at about $10 each in 1986. Three years ago, I sold one of them at around $500. That's a return of 50 times or 5000% in 20 year, equivalent to 21.6% compounded annual return. I think not many investments could beat this. I check eBay that current bidding goes as high as US600. A little regret to have sold one. But then again, I still have one more :)

On hind sight, this is obviously a very good investment. Had I threw in $10,000 to buy 1,000 pieces at that time, I would have US600,000 now! But then, actually it is very difficult to identify winners in stamp collection. More so nowadays, as the quantity issue is so large now. I was told that this particular monkey can fetch such a high price because a lot of them were scrapped due poor printing technology at that time. And I think it certainly benefits from the growing purchase power of Chinese stamp collectors.

Singapore 44th National Day - a peek to the past

One more week and Singapore will celebrate its 44th National Day.

44 years is long in a man's life. However, it is relatively short in a country's history.

Singapore was occupied by Japan from 1942 till 1945. During this period, Japanese introduced a new currency, Banana money. As expected, when Japan lost the war, the Banana money basically become stacks of worthless paper. As mentioned in previous posting (http://mycroeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/07/gold-for-alien-attack.html), unlike gold, the value of fiat money depends on the credibility and capability of the issuer government.

Other than the well-known Banana money, the Japanese also used military exchange note. See below. It guaranteed full value exchange, and warned heavy punishment for counterfeit.

While celebrating the National Day, it is important to know what exactly is the celebaration.

Unknown note BC040022

Hi, I am a novice notes and stamps collector. I came across this strange note. Any experts out there know what is its origin country?

The only thing I can recognize there is 1917, which I believe is the year of issue of the note.

Thanks in advance.