Gradually, Then Suddenly
ZIM40, 2006, 20 ZWN

Slot Comment:

2nd Dollar Emergency Bearer Check AA Prefix

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Note Details

  

Set Details
Note Description: 20 Dollars 2006 - Wmk: Zimbabwe Bird
Grade: 67 EPQ
Country: Zimbabwe
Note Number: ZIM40
Signatures/
Vignettes: 		- Sign. #8
Certification #: 8087274-001
Owner: Revenant
Set Category: World
Set Name: Gradually, Then Suddenly
Slot Name: ZIM40, 2006, 20 ZWN
Research: See PMG's Census Report for this Note

Owner's Description

Operation Reduce Prices launched in June 2007 as an attempt to stop sky-rocketing food and commodity prices with inflation at the time running at an annualized 4000%. The government compelled businesses and manufacturers to cut prices by up to 50 percent - especially on key good and commodities and food items - under threat of severe fines and / or imprisonment.

Interestingly, inflation was so out of control at ~4000% (3700% at the time of the announcement) the announcement was made on or around June 26th, asking people to roll prices back to what they’d been on June 18th, about 1 week prior - and that was up to a 50% reduction. Meaning prices had roughly doubled on some things in about 1 week. Teams of “inspectors” were sent to businesses to make sure the program was complied with.

Some sources call this a July 2007 program even though contemporary articles, including from Reuters, date the announcement to late June 2007. References dating to July 2007 may be talking about the “inspectors” visiting businesses and enforcing the change - which I’m sure went on for a while and was not fully concluded by June 30, 2007, assuming they were even able to start inspections by July 1, 2007.

Not surprisingly this led to store shelves being cleared out within days, but businesses couldn’t then afford to restock, and this led to shortages of basically everything. The goods sold in this way were resold on the black market at prices that were higher than the price before “Operation Reduce Prices” went into effect.

Some speculated that the whole program and the subsequent, predictable shortages were an attempt to shift the blame for the inflation on the private sector and deflect blame from the government. In the same article by Reuters, the International Trade Minister at the time - Obert Mpofu - was quoted as saying the government was “aware that these escalating price increases are a political ploy engineered by our detractors to effect an illegal regime change against the ruling party and the government following a failure of illegal economic sanctions.” Because that’s just want you do when your house is on fire - blame everyone else.

With 1 ZWN being worth 1000 ZWD, this note would have had the same value as the P-25 $20,000 Cargill Bearer Checks, the P-18 $20,000 traveler’s checks and the P-23 $20,000 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-41 (50 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. Look at P-41 for more on Victoria 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.

This note is a bit of a rarity in my Zimbabwe collection in that it is a note I submitted for grading myself! I bought 3 raw bearer checks - one each of P-40, P-45 and P-46(b) and sent them into NGC with some traveler’s checks (P-15 to P-20) to fill in some holes in my collection. My gamble with self-submitting paid off in a big way with this note, which came back as a TOP POP 67 EPQ with only 1 other P-40 in that grade at the time.

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