Early Transactions in Denial
ZIM15, 2003, 1,000 ZWD

Slot Comment:

S/N: 1755808 Redeemed: Oct 2004

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Note Details

  

Set Details
Note Description: 1000 Dollars ND (2003)
Grade: 65 EPQ
Country: Zimbabwe
Note Number: ZIM15
Signatures/
Vignettes: 		- Wmk: Zimbabwe Bird
Certification #: 8074632-085
Owner: Revenant
Set Category: World
Set Name: Early Transactions in Denial
Slot Name: ZIM15, 2003, 1,000 ZWD
Research: See PMG's Census Report for this Note

Owner's Description

The thing that makes the P-15, $1000 checks particularly interesting is that they are for $1000. By 2003 the country had the P-12, $1000 banknote. The Cargill Bearer checks excluded a $1000 denomination and only had $5000 (P-13) and $10000 (P-14). The 2003 Bearer checks (P-21 to P-23) also exclude a $1000 denomination. What the existence of P-15 suggests, what I can only assume, is that they were having a hard time printing enough of the P-12 banknotes to meet market needs for a while and they had to make these to fill the gap.

This check was stamped as “PAID” on Oct 26, 2004 (which happens to be just a week after my birthday, the year I turned 18). It was also marked as “Zimbank Waste” on “11-10-2004,” which, since Zimbabwe apparently dates things like the UK does, this most likely means October 11th 2004. This is a bit surprising to me because this stamp seems to have been placed after the Oct 26th stamp and it just doesn’t make much sense for me for this have been stamped as “Waste” before it was stamped as “PAID” - and this is the only one of the 13 I own now that has a “Waste” stamp. In any case, these late 2004 dates - and other notes I’ve seen with dates into early to mid-2005 - show that these checks were still in use well after 2003. But these checks still have the signature of the Acting Governor from 2003, not the signature of Dr Gideon Gono, who would have been running things by that point.

How something that was redeemed and stamped as waste to be discarded came to be in my collection and encapsulated in gem uncirc condition is a bit of a mystery to me but... it happened somehow! Somebody kept the trash I guess – possibly foreseeing that one day there would be people like me with an interest in these things, and they kept trash paper and turned it into something that I later paid about US$40 for 16 years later. Life is funny sometimes that way, I guess.

Some of the things I find interesting here is some of what is NOT on it. The “Date” line is blank, so they did not bother to date it when it was issued to someone. The name of the person it was issued to was also left blank and, even though you were supposed to have to show ID to redeem these, there is no redemption signature on the check. So, there is no record of when it was issued, or to who, or who it was that redeemed it – at least not on the check itself.

That information might have been retained at the Chisipite Sub-Branch in Harare, which is apparently where this check was stamped as waste, but I have a feeling the answer is “No.” My guess is, based on all the blanks, at least by this point in late 2004, they were just dealing with a ton of these increasingly worthless $1,000 checks and they were doing things “fast and loose” to process them all faster. By the time this thing was redeemed, $1,000 in Zimbabwe dollars was barely worth an American quarter or dime – so who would have even cared? It would not have even bought you bread probably.

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