Old Turkish lira banknotes, which lost six zeros 14 years ago, have become a collector's item.Hasan Mavi, a member of the International Banknote Society (IBNS), which has been collecting banknotes from all over the world for 30 years and has more than 20,000 bank notes, evaluated the situation of banknotes with many zeros.
Mavi noted that there have been nine emissions of the Turkish lira, which means introducing money into circulation, from the declaration of the Turkish Republic to the present day. He told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the first emission was coined in Ottoman Turkish in 1928 and other banknotes were created in the Latin alphabet after the Alphabet Reform.
Mavi later recalled the third and fourth emission bank notes were coined in the period of İsmet İnönü and his pictre was used instead of Atatürk's. He also added that the fifth emission banknotes were issued in the period of Adnan Menderes, while the sixth ones were in the 1970s and the seventh ones were coined in the 1980s with high inflation.
Implying the highest banknote was 20 million Turkish liras, which are with six zeros, he continued, "We changed the situation that appeared in the first periods of the Republic with the removal of six zeros from the Turkish lira in 2004. People who travel a lot like me had many big problems. When you gave a bank note with six zeros to a bank abroad, they were surprised. They couldn't calculate it with calculators."
He said that many people, including him, were laughed at in those periods.
"We can easily exchange our money nowadays. The biggest effect of the removal of zeros from our money is in terms of moral. It raised our morals and comforted us as we use similar currencies with other countries' currencies," he said. "These old banknotes with many zeros started to be sold for more than their own currencies. For example, a
TL 20 million bank note is sold for between TL 40 or TL 150."
Stressing that the old Turkish Liras are center of interest for both Turkish and foreign collectors, Mavi said, "There are a lot of zeros on old Yugoslavia and Zimbabwean banknotes that you can't read the number. You need to count the zeros to understand whether it is million, billion or trillion. Even if our money has never had as many zeros as theirs, the seventh emission bank notes can be sold with good prices according to whether they were folded or not because of their rarity."
The first emission sold for TL 1 million
Indicating the most precious collection money of the Turkish Republic is TL 1,000, the first emission, Mavi mentioned that this money is sold for nearly TL 1 million according to its condition. He reported that the price of the second and third emission bank notes and the bank notes in the period of İsmet İnönü are also high and they are sold for TL 40,000 or TL 50,000.
Emphasizing that bank notes with many zeros are generally used in Africa and some North American countries, Mavi said that many European countries, including Germany, were using notes with many zeros in the period of World War I and World War II.
