Gradually, Then Suddenly
ZIM41, 2006, 50 ZWN

Slot Comment:

2nd Dollar Emergency Bearer Check AB Prefix

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Note Details

  

Set Details
Note Description: 50 Dollars 2006 - Wmk: Zimbabwe Bird
Grade: 67 EPQ
Country: Zimbabwe
Note Number: ZIM41
Signatures/
Vignettes: 		- Sign. #8
Certification #: 8047606-059
Owner: Revenant
Set Category: World
Set Name: Gradually, Then Suddenly
Slot Name: ZIM41, 2006, 50 ZWN
Research: See PMG's Census Report for this Note

Owner's Description

Operation Chikorokoza Chapera (“No Illegal Panning”) kicked off in November 2006 and saw more than 25,000 gold panners arrested according to some reports. The economy was in ruins. The unemployment rate had hit 80 percent. Operation Murambatsvina had made things worse by destroying small stalls and businesses and Operation Sunrise was getting some blame for destroying the savings of the people because of the seizure of “excess currency” and demonetizing any old 1st dollar notes that weren’t exchanged - but that currency was rapidly becoming worthless anyway. With all this going on “informal,” “artisanal” mining became one of the few ways for Zimbabweans to make money - and the goal of Chikorokoza Chapera was to shut that down.

In addition to the arrests, police set up roadblocks on all the main highways to Zambia, South Africa and Botswana - forcing people to “queue like goats and cows” and submit to “inhuman searches” to “recover” any gold being transported out of the country.

With 1 ZWN being worth 1000 ZWD, this note would have had the same value as the P-26 $50,000 Cargill Bearer Checks, the P-19 $50,000 traveler’s checks and the P-28, P-29 and P-30 $50,000 Emergency Bearer Checks.

Where the balancing rocks are a major design feature on the front of the banknotes, with the checks of this series they appear only as part of the seal of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

On the back, the bearer checks of this series feature different designs, emphasizing things of national or cultural significance, much like the first dollar banknotes that came before them. In that regard, these bearer checks are a bit of a cross between the bearer checks and the banknotes of the first dollars in terms of design.

These 100-dollar bearer checks (ZIM42) use the image of Victoria Falls. This image appears to be the same artwork that first appeared on the 1st dollar bearer checks series (P-28 through P-32). The image also appears on P-40 (20 ZWN). It looks like the image of Victoria Falls that appears on the 3rd dollar series might be a re-use of a very small segment of this same artwork, but the full image shown on the back of this not does not appear again after this note.

Victoria Falls is a waterfall in southern Africa on the Zambezi River at the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. While it is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, Victoria Falls is classified as the largest, based on its combined width of 1,708 meters (5,604 feet) and height of 108 meters (354 ft), resulting in the world's largest sheet of falling water. Victoria Falls is roughly twice the height of Niagara Falls and well over twice the width of Horseshoe Falls. In height and width Victoria Falls is rivalled only by Argentina’s and Brazil's Iguazu Falls.

It always feels a bit careless and sloppy to get two sequential notes or designs in a Zimbabwe series that use the same back artwork. There was seemingly a deliberate effort to reuse the artwork but rotate between them and not just keep reusing the same design. But then you see these two sequential notes, that I think were released at the same time, and somehow someone missed that they had essentially the same design with different colors. But they are different colors - the P-40 is orange where the P-41 is purple. So very different colors; so they have that going for them at least.

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