Thursday, February 2 In pursuit of old African banknotes

The rest of my day today was centered around the search for banknotes used from 1903 through 2003, notes that are no longer worth anything at the bank, but which I and my fellow African banknote collectors have an interest in. Specifically, I am in contact with several other individuals who have given me a list of specific varieties of these “retired” banknotes that they are lacking in their collections and who’ve asked me to look for them on their behalf.

So, after having dropped off my cloth at the tailor’s, we got in a taxi to go to a bank that would exchange the US dollars I brought with me into the local currency. (You may remember that I tried to do this yesterday, but the bank where I went told me I’d have to go to Independence Plaza to find a bank that exchanges dollars.) Exchanging my dollars for CFA turned out to be pretty straightforward. At that point I had the wherewithal to buy any “retired” banknotes that I might find. So we ventured into one of the local markets.

We did find some notes of interest, but the asking prices were much higher than I was accustomed to in other West African countries, so I didn’t buy much for a while. Eventually, however, I picked up one here, one there, until I had about four of them. Then we got to someone who had some better (more interesting, scarcer, higher value) banknotes, and I bought four from him. That seemed to uncork the bottle, as he then returned with a carpetbag full of banknotes. He claimed that there was 13,000,000cfa (about $25,000) in it, but it was all money that no longer had any value at the bank.

(There was a recall of all these old bills about 15 years ago, where people could take them to the bank and exchange them for the new currency being issued, but many West Africans have a pretty feeble level of trust for banks, so they held on to what they had. Now they’re stuck with envelopes and drawers and suitcases full of “worthless” money, and their only hope is to find a money collector like me who will pay them something for it.)

I spent the next three hours or so looking through hundreds and hundreds of old banknotes, most of which were very common varieties and not worth anything near their asking price, searching for the specific ones that my collector friends had asked me to find for them. Of course, I was also searching for ones that I didn’t already have myself, but that was a very short list, so I didn’t make much progress there.

In the end, I found three for one collector and six or seven for the other in addition to two for me that were improvements on what I had already. The highlight of the day, though, was a very ordinary-looking 1000 cfa note from 2003. I had no idea of its importance when I bought it, or I’d have paid what the seller was asking for it without haggling. But when I returned home and consulted my database, I discovered that it was an undocumented variety—one that no one in the Who’s Who of World Banknotes even knew existed. When I get it back to the US, my first responsibility on the numismatic front will be to scan it and send it to the publishers of the banknote catalogs so they can add it to their listings.

Tired and hungry after three hours of handling old money, I had Touré take us to a place where we could get something to eat. He took me to Planet Kebab, where I had pita bread wrap containing chicken and vegetables, with a side of French fries. I think it was good food, but I was hungry enough by then that it may have tasted better than it actually was. It satisfied my hunger in any case and tasted good as I ate it, so I was grateful for it.

We returned by taxi to the SIL Center, but finally got out and walked the last half-mile because that was faster than the taxi was able to go, given all of the rush-hour traffic. Once there, I gave Touré some candy I’d brought from the US to give to his children, paid him for his service as tour guide, interpreter, and protector, then bade him good night. It was beginning to get dark outside by that time. Then I sat at my computer and recorded the details of my expenses for the day.

And to end the day, I spent an hour and a half writing the two blog entries for the day. (And it took you how many minutes to read them?) Seems a bit like a cook who spends two hours preparing a meal, only to see it consumed in a fraction of that time. The nice thing about a blog, though, is that, no matter how many people “consume” it, it’s still all there for the next person. That’s a bit different than with a meal someone prepares.