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Note Details

Set Details

Note Description: Venezuela, Banco Central
20,000 Bolívares 2019 - Wmk: S. Bolívar & BCV
Grade: 68 EPQ
Country: VEN
Note Number: VEN110a
Signatures/
Vignettes:
- With Wide Seg. Sec.
Thread
Certification #: 8081912-014  
Owner: Revenant
Sets Competing: Revenant's Venezuelan Bolivares  Score: 304
Date Added: 6/4/2021
Research: Currently not available

Owner's Description

I feel like this group of three notes (VEN109, VEN110, and VEN111) has to be the result of someone on the government throwing up their hands in exasperation or desperation, wringing their hands in their hair and saying, "I give up! I cannot deal with this anymore! I do not care. The people do not care! Just put different numbers on them and change the ink cartridge and print up as many as we can afford the ink and paper for!" Either that or some apathetic bureaucrat in a socialist government just shrugged and said, "Eh. Good enough. We need it done and done fast." I think the first is more amusing, but the 2nd is perhaps more likely.

You see the first sign of this with the VEN100 coming right after the VEN99, using the same design - also using Simon Bolivar's portrait, just a different portrait of him - but these three notes, released at the same time as a kind of mini-series, is the money printers finally just completely giving up and surrendering to the madness of currency creation in a time of hyperinflation.

To be fair, while I am bashing how redundant and lazy this approach to note design seems to be, they did change the portrait of him they used and used a new back for the note. The VEN108 did not use the same image on the back that was used on VEN93, VEN99, and VEN100 - they all used an image of a bird, but it was a different image of a different bird. With these 2019 notes they moved away from having a bird on the back completely and went with an image of their fancy new, Mausoleum of the Liberator” - See VEN111 for more on that.

You do not get to see this in quite the same way with the Zimbabwean notes because there was always a greater level of design uniformity there with the Chiremba rocks always featuring so prominently on the front of every note - except the 2nd dollar checks, and even there the rocks were there, just smaller.

At the time it was announced and released to circulation in Jun 2019, this note was worth about US$4, with the Bolivar Soberano worth about one fifth of an American cent (USS1 : 500 BsS).

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