I’ve recently purchased what seems to be an old Colombian banknote. I only had a very short opportunity to bid, so I didn’t get to look it up in the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, but now that its come and I am trying to catalog it, I can’t find it anywhere in the catalogs. I’m hoping that someone can help. Its a 30 centavo note that says ‘Republica de Colombia’ but says ‘Para El Use Del Departamento De Panama’. It seems to say that its valid from ’1 Enero do 1899′ until ’31 Diciembre de 1900′. Any ideas?

Unknown Colombian paper money from 1899

I can’t believe my luck: I had no idea that old paper money notes from Paraguay could be purchased so affordably. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that I’ve even seen a pre-1900′s banknote from Paraguay on eBay before (as an auction, not as a buy it now), so when I saw a note from 1865 for cheap, I was excited to bid. And can you believe it? I won! I got this beauty, pick 20 from Paraguay, for just $5.00. What a beautiful piece of history.

Paraguay p20: 4 Reales from 1865

The listing of paper money from China is the last hurdle in my bid to add images and catalog values, from the 2008 catalog, to RealBanknotes.com. When I began China consisted of about 4000 banknotes. From the onset I wanted to combine Japanese China, Taiwan, Chinese Puppet Banks, etc into one category: China. This was to make the search process easier for visitors. However, I found that I cannot process 12000 catalog values at once, because the system is programmed to do an entire country in one shot. Hence, I have retracted and re-created Chinese subsidiaries, as follows:

Empire of China
Republic of China
Japanese China
Russian China
Chinese Puppet Banks
Chinese Manchukuo
Chinese Taiwan

The divisions have already been created. Also, values for all subsections excluding the Republic of China have been added to the database. Images for some of the subsections have been uploaded as well. Its been a few hours of work for me, so I had better get back to some paid work, but I hope to have the remainder of values added soon. Pictures will be sure to follow. I should have the entire 2008 catalog added soon. Then maybe it will be time for a re-design and update? Who knows …