Are old banknotes worth anything?

The drawer with the old passports usually has a few notes in it: Dutch guilders, Spanish pesetas, German marks, Italian lire, an English fiver with a portrait nobody recognises. Two questions follow, and they have different answers.

Can I still exchange it?

Mostly no.

The eurozone's legacy currencies were withdrawn on different terms. German marks can still be exchanged at the Bundesbank, with no deadline. Irish pounds, Spanish pesetas and Austrian schillings had exchange windows that have closed or are effectively closed for notes. Dutch guilder notes stopped being exchangeable in 2032 for most series, and guilder coins much earlier.

Outside the euro, a Bank of England note that has been withdrawn from circulation can still be exchanged at the Bank of England itself, indefinitely, at face value. Paper fivers and tenners replaced by polymer are not dead money.

So it is worth five minutes checking the issuing central bank before assuming a note is only a collectible.

What is it worth as a collectible?

A withdrawn note in ordinary condition is usually worth somewhere between a couple of euros and thirty. Our catalog has ranges like $7 to $14 for a 25 guilder Robin note and $36 to $39 for a 50 mark Balthasar Neumann, which is the shape of most of them: more than nothing, less than the story you were hoping for.

The ones that break the pattern are:

• Very high denominations. A 5000 peseta note or a 1000 escudo note was a lot of money when it was issued, and few survived unspent.
• Provisional and overprint issues. Notes rushed out during a currency change or an occupation, often printed over older stock. Short print runs, high survivorship value.
• Early series. The first design of any currency, particularly pre-war.
• Replacement notes. Printed to replace a spoiled sheet, marked with a star or a special prefix. Collectors pay for the prefix.

Condition matters more than it does on coins

A coin that has been in a pocket for thirty years is worn but intact. A banknote that has been in a wallet for thirty years is a different object: folds, a rounded corner, a softened edge, and each of those steps down a grade.

The vocabulary runs from UNC, never folded and with the original crispness, through AU and EF and VF down to Poor. The gap between UNC and VF on the same note is routinely a factor of five.

The practical consequence: do not flatten a folded note, do not put it under a book, do not tape a tear. Every one of those is visible and every one costs more than the fold did.

How to store what you keep

Flat, in a polyester sleeve, out of light. Not PVC, which yellows and can transfer plasticiser onto the paper over years. Not a photo album with adhesive pages, which is worse. And not folded into a passport, which is where most of them are.

Buck reads banknotes with the same shot it reads coins, and 10,475 of the records in the index are paper. Point at it flat and it will name the series and give you the band.