500 000 HELL BANK NOTE

Hell bank notes are a form of joss paper — ritual currency burned as offerings to the deceased, rooted in Chinese folk religion and ancestor veneration practices. The "Bank of Hades" imprint is a convention, not a real institution; the denomination is deliberately astronomical because the afterlife, in this theology, is expensive. The 1989 date on this example likely reflects the production year of a specific print run rather than any issuing authority decision — manufacturers updated dates sporadically.

These are collected primarily as ephemera and social history objects. Paper quality varies enormously by manufacturer and batch.