2018-02-02 Fri

Turkish banknotes of high denominations like 20 million Liras which were removed from circulation 14 years ago have all become collector’s items today. Experts have stated that the Turkish lira banknotes were released 9 times from the declaration of Turkish Republic to the present day. In 1928, the first set of banknotes was released in Ottoman Turkish. After the Alphabet Reform, other banknotes were created in the Latin alphabet. The sixth and seventh sets of banknotes were released in the 1970s and the 1980s respectively with high inflation. The six zeros were removed from Turkish Lira in 2014 for making transactions and calculations more convenient.

The older banknotes with six zeros are being sold in the collector’s market for a good margin. A TL 20 million bank note is sold for between TL 40 or TL 150. The TL 1,000 note of the first emission is sold for almost TL 1 million based on its condition. Second and third emission bank notes and those from the times of Ismet inonu are sold for TL 40,000 or TL 50,000.They are in demand among both Turkish and foreign collectors. Pricing is based on rarity and condition.

Banknotes of Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe have more zeros on them. So much that it is sometimes difficult to count if the denomination is million, billion or trillion. Apart from African and some North American countries, many European countries like Germany were using notes with many zeros during the times of WW I and WW II.