Belsat.eu has prepared a collection of the most unusual notes in the world + designs for the thaler that never became a national currency of Belarus.
The Central Bank of Russia has issued bank notes depicting a snowboarder. Today 20 mln bank hundred-ruble notes designed on the ocassion of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi have been brought into circulation.
The first Belarusian currency appeared in 1992: we have been using it for 20 years. But it could be absolutely different: in the early 1990s Belarusian artist Uladzimir Krukouski designed sketches for the thaler, a proposed national currency of Belarus. Paper thalers were to be printed in white-red colours, with images of princes, poets, scientists on bank notes.
But this nation-oriented concept lost to another idea, which was more ideologically safe at that times: people started paying with notes depicting rabbits, squirrels, bisons and bears instead of poet Yanka Kupala or legendary Prince Usyaslau Charadzey (Magician). Artist Kanstantsin Khatsianouski made the plan fly; it is interesting that the sketches of animals were practically clones to the Lithuanian coupons issued a year before.
Top 10 fanciest bank notes
1 Swiss franc
2 Australian dollar
3 Arubian florin
4 Venezuelan bolivar
5 East Caribbean dollar
6 Haitian gourde
7 Israeli shekel
8 Papua New Guinean kina
9 Dollar of New Zealand
10 North Korean won
