Trillionaire!

The other day, I purchased Ten Trillion Dollars on ebay for a mere $9 and change. Here’s a picture of it:

So, it’s “Zimbabwe dollars,” but that still has to be a lot of money, right?

This morning, my friend Curt asked me how much it was worth. I googled “Zimbabwe exchange rate,” punched in the amount at the first site I came to, and got the answer:

$81,004,768,003.09

81 Million Billion dollars! Not bad for a $9 investment.  “Maybe I shouldn’t just leave this bill lying around in my cubical,” I thought.

Then I went to another google result, and I got a different answer:

“Notice: The Zimbabwe government redenominated the ZWD again on February 2, 2009 at a rate of 1,000,000,000,000 old ZWD to 1 new ZWD.” So, 1 trillion old dollars is 1 new dollar. So I have 10 new dollars, which is worth: 8 cents.

Oh, how my heart sunk when I learned that I had not 81 Million Billion dollars, but 8 cents. (Probably 4 cents by the time I finish writing this post — the inflation there is ridiculous!) Well, I’ll hang on to it. When the Zimbabwean economy rebounds, that’s going to be my retirement!