10 000 Dollars Bearer Cheque

By 2006, Zimbabwe's inflation had long since outpaced the Reserve Bank's ability to issue notes in useful denominations, and the "bearer cheque" format was the institution's legal workaround — technically not a banknote, which would have required parliamentary authorization under existing legislation, but a negotiable instrument the Reserve Bank could print on its own authority. The distinction fooled no one, least of all the public.

Fidelity Printers and Refiners, a Reserve Bank subsidiary in Harare, produced the entire hyperinflationary series domestically after Zimbabwe lost access to foreign printing contracts. Security features were correspondingly thin — a watermark, but none of the more sophisticated elements that outside printers typically supplied.