Years ago, when the inflation in Poland was in triple figures, we were all multi-millionaires.
I remember getting as a student a salary in the region of 14,000,000 old Polish Zloty, which would nowadays be worth probably around £300 or less.
I completely forgot what these notes used to look like until I stumbled across a fascinating collection on Flickr, called Polish Banknotes “Great Polish” featuring the entire collection of old 1980s and early 1990s notes.
There’s everything there – from a pretty worthless (even then) and pretty ugly 10 zloty note to a coveted 2,000,000 note featuring Ignacy Jan Paderewski, former Polish Prime Minister and pianist.
Marie Curie was featured on the commonly used, but pretty low-value 20,000 Zloty note, while Frederic Chopin was valued at only 5,000 Zloty.
Nicolas Copernicus, without whom we would still probably believe that the Sun circles the Earth and not the other way round, was featured on the 1,000 Zloty note. What a cheek.
I asked Peter, the owner of the collection on Flickr why he uploaded the images.
“Memories. Plus I wanted to share part of our history with the world,” he told me.
What a splendid idea.
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