500 000 Dollars - Hell Bank Note

Hell Bank Notes are votive offerings burned in Chinese funerary rituals so that the deceased may have currency in the afterlife. The "Hell Bank" name is a Western mistranslation — the Chinese 冥通銀行 translates more accurately as something like "Bank of the Underworld" or "Netherworld Communication Bank," with no infernal connotation in the original. The practice derives from the broader tradition of burning joss paper, which predates printed banknote forms by centuries.

Collected seriously since the 1980s in the West, largely as novelty items. No issuing authority, no legal tender status anywhere — but that, of course, is the point.