0 Euro - 2022 Winter Alpine Skiing

The zero euro souvenir program was launched in 2015 by Richard Faille, a French entrepreneur who recognized that European tourists reliably collect banknotes as keepsakes — yet rarely spend them. By printing legal-denomination-format notes at zero face value, issuers bypassed the regulatory constraints of actual currency while still engaging Oberthur Fiduciaire, one of Europe's principal security printers, to produce them with genuine banknote-grade paper and embedded security threads.

This example, issued in 2018 but themed to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics alpine skiing events, was one of thousands of topical variants released years ahead of the events they commemorate — a deliberate collector-market strategy rather than anything tied to the Games' actual schedule.