Where to buy "worthless" paper money?

A little while ago, at some point in the 1970's, I remember my bank got
the very first ATM in town. They had it installed in the bank lobby to
demonstrate how it worked and how easy it was to make deposits and get
cash without seeing a teller or outside banking hours. While everyone
else was trying out the cash withdrawls, I was the one guy making the
demo deposits. Silly me, and probably unamerican for thinking about
saving instead of spending! :-)

Anyway, the bank had the withdrawl envelopes stuffed with Brazilian and
Peruvian paper money, which we quickly learned was worthless. Well,
make that nearly worthless, as the notes were pretty to look at.

Now, a few decades later, I am wondering where I can buy a few hundred
(give or take) worthless notes like these. I am thinking that they
would be fun and educational for teaching children about money, and
playing store or bank games without giving them the real stuff :-)

I have already spent several hours searching ebay and other places on
the 'net, but there is NO WAY that I am going to pay twenty cents or
more per note. Either the sellers I have found are sharks, or I just do
not know the magic search terms to find "worthless currency" for sale.
For now, I will try to be nice and assume the fault is mine :-)

So does anyone have a recommendation for where to find a few hundred
banknotes for a decent price? I do not really care about the country or
dates (obviously) so long as the notes are in good condition, and a few
different denominations would be nice. What is a reasonable price,
maybe five cents to maybe ten cents for exceptionally nice notes (up to
$50 for a thousand)?

I have to believe that there are worthless notes *SOMEWHERE* that are
very nearly "not worth the paper they are written on", but where? If
there is truly nothing available, I guess that I will print up some play
money of my own, but something printed by a real country would be best.

Many thanks in advance for any leads, information, or even offers!

-Richard

On Sun, 22 May 2005 17:22:56 -0700, Richard Hodges
wrote:

A little while ago, at some point in the 1970's, I remember my bank got
the very first ATM in town. They had it installed in the bank lobby to
demonstrate how it worked and how easy it was to make deposits and get
cash without seeing a teller or outside banking hours. While everyone
else was trying out the cash withdrawls, I was the one guy making the
demo deposits. Silly me, and probably unamerican for thinking about
saving instead of spending! :-)

Anyway, the bank had the withdrawl envelopes stuffed with Brazilian and
Peruvian paper money, which we quickly learned was worthless. Well,
make that nearly worthless, as the notes were pretty to look at.

Now, a few decades later, I am wondering where I can buy a few hundred
(give or take) worthless notes like these. I am thinking that they
would be fun and educational for teaching children about money, and
playing store or bank games without giving them the real stuff :-)

I have already spent several hours searching ebay and other places on
the 'net, but there is NO WAY that I am going to pay twenty cents or
more per note. Either the sellers I have found are sharks, or I just do
not know the magic search terms to find "worthless currency" for sale.
For now, I will try to be nice and assume the fault is mine :-)

So does anyone have a recommendation for where to find a few hundred
banknotes for a decent price? I do not really care about the country or
dates (obviously) so long as the notes are in good condition, and a few
different denominations would be nice. What is a reasonable price,
maybe five cents to maybe ten cents for exceptionally nice notes (up to
$50 for a thousand)?

I have to believe that there are worthless notes *SOMEWHERE* that are
very nearly "not worth the paper they are written on", but where? If
there is truly nothing available, I guess that I will print up some play
money of my own, but something printed by a real country would be best.

Actually, engaging the kiddies in their ówn creativity is the BEST of
all solutions. We used to spend hours drawing our own. Favourite
technique was to take a piece of manila paper and copy of Red Book and
try to use bust dollars or that eagle on the back of the $20 as design
elements. We'd make up our own countries, serial numbers,
denominations, etc. Then we'd take the notes, crumple them, fold them
and rub them briskly for a couple minutes to make them look
circulated! After a while we got wise to the fact that Dad had access
to a photocopier at work and would ask him to run off a few pages.
Double sided, even! Alas, I kept none of those early pieces. Later I
made quite a few pieces for vairous fantasy countries we'd made up.
Still have those.

Once we got a hold of a small hoarde of foreign banknotes, especially
one of those huge blue 100 mark notes (1909 and thereabouts), we had
all new possibilitites to draw from.

There is some fellow here on RCPM that did a series of play money for
his kids on the computer and printed them -- quite beautiful!

If you really think the kids aren't up to using the creative portions
of their brains, try he http://www.educationalcoin.com/. They
seem to have just what you'd need, plus they also offer coins. Coins
are something that would be quite difficult to do at home!

Another thing you can do is look on Ebay for "play money". You can
usually find older packets of Whitman Publishing notes. Very nicely
engraved and done on decent paper. Can sometimes find these or other
non-US-currency-photocopy play money in the dollar store or similar.
Also, these tend to be very inexpensive.

Padraic.

Many thanks in advance for any leads, information, or even offers!

-Richard

la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu
ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.