See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

1 000 000 B.‑Pengő

Issuer Magyar Nemzeti Bank
Year 1946
Type Log in to see details
Value 1 000 000 Billions Pengos (1 000 000 B.‑ Pengő)
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse lettering EGYMILLIÓ B.-PENGŐ
BUDAPEST, 1946 ÉVI JÚNIUS HÓ 3.-ÁN
MAGYAR NEMZETI BANK
FŐTANÁCSOS
ELNÖK
VEZÉRIGAZGATÓ
A BANKJEGYHAMISÍTÁST A TÖRVÉNY BÜNTETI
(Translation: One million billion Pengoes / Budapest, 3 June 1946 / Hungarian National Bank / Chief Councillor / President / Director General / Counterfeiting banknotes is punishable by law)
Reverse description The reverse is dominated by a full-width dark brown intaglio vignette rendered after Géza Mészöly's painting "At the Shore of Lake Balaton", with tall trees in the foreground and figures alongside boats at the water's edge. An ornate vertical panel to the left incorporates the Hungarian coat of arms, while a corresponding panel to the right carries the inscription "EGY MILLIÓ". Repeating denomination text runs along both the upper and lower margins of the composition.
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Log in to see details
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

By the time this note entered circulation in mid-1946, Hungary's hyperinflation had already exceeded anything recorded in monetary history. The pengő was collapsing so rapidly that the National Bank printed denominations in the billions and trillions within weeks of this million-pengő issue — the B.-pengő unit itself, shorthand for billió-pengő (one trillion pengő), was introduced precisely because the existing numerical vocabulary had become unworkable for everyday transactions.

Helbing Ferenc and Géza Mészöly were both established figures in Hungarian graphic arts, but the quality of their work here was largely irrelevant — notes of this series circulated for days, not months, before losing all practical value.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE