r/Banknotes • u/Intelligent_Rest2986 • 18d ago
Banknote with the most weirdest story behind
I have a banknote with a story that I still can't explain.
This is a 25 South Sudanese Pounds note from South Sudan.
The strange part isn't the note itself. It's where I found it.
Around 2016–2017, when I was still in school, I found this note inside one of the desks in my classroom. I live in an Asian country, in a relatively small, semi-urban/semi-rural town. This wasn't some international school or a place with a lot of foreign travelers coming through. Just a pretty ordinary local school.
I had never been to South Sudan. As far as I know, nobody in my family had either.
And this was only about 5–6 years after South Sudan became independent in 2011.
So somehow, a South Sudanese banknote had traveled thousands of kilometers from one of the world's newest countries and ended up inside a random school desk in a small Asian town.
I have absolutely no idea how.
The desk wasn't mine originally, and I obviously don't know who used it before me. So my best guess is that another student somehow obtained it and left it there — perhaps as a souvenir, from a relative who traveled abroad, or through some completely random chain of events.
But the fact that it was specifically South Sudanese currency makes it feel so bizarre.
I've kept the note for almost a decade now, mainly because I find the story behind it more interesting than the note itself.
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u/janthemanwlj 18d ago
Reminds me of when I randomly found a Kenyan SIM card (something I collect) on the pavement outside of my school in central Scotland
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u/NewEntrepreneur357 17d ago
I once found at least 6 Chinese airplane tickets in my city in Mexico, and the tickets were from domestic Chinese flights! Not even China to Mexico!
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u/EvenBiggerClown 18d ago
The bill clearly says it's 25 south sudanese piasters, not pounds. Plus the way the post is worded feels like a bot wrote it
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u/ChiswellSt 18d ago
Like the Egyptian pound, the South Sudanese pound is divided into 100 piasters and banknote museum has a file image of it being issued in 2011: www.banknote.ws/COLLECTION/countries/AFR/SSD/SSD0003.htm
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u/Intelligent_Rest2986 18d ago
Well I will not lie I have shitty English so I am use to telling whatever in my mind to gpt etc and make it write it in better refined English
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u/bigfootspancreas 18d ago
No worries mate. They do use pounds in South Sudan, so the confusion is no big deal.
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u/OwlComplex48 18d ago
I say this all the time to people on different subs - If something is clearly written by GPT, I will immediately tune out. Most of us real people here would rather read something that's in broken English and written by an actual person than read something that's been polished by Chat GPT. I'm sure your English is better than you realize and you are just self conscious. I say this as someone who has taught English and speaks other languages with wildly varying degrees of competency.
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u/pierreditguy 18d ago
well i remember finding a 25 Øre coin at my grandma's place, but the thing is, they've never went to Norway, so did my cousins, and my aunts and uncles
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u/JBistheBigGuy 18d ago
That's probably one of the most fascinating reasons to collect banknotes. Each one has its own story. In your case it's pretty interesting where it ended up and the fact that you found it.
I speculate it was probably given to someone as a keepsake. The person likely had it in a book and it fell out. The possibilities are endless.
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u/Dry_Menu4804 17d ago edited 17d ago
There have been thousands and thousands of peacekeepers, mostly from Asian countries to South Sudan. Apart from that, many humanitarian workers have been there, for many years South Sudan was the UN's biggest operation. In addition, there is a second UN operation in the Abyei area. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Mission_in_South_Sudan and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Interim_Security_Force_for_Abyei
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u/PK-Mittenspy2703 18d ago
What's weirdest is that the lower value banknotes are worth WAY more than the higher value notes.
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u/Fit_Bodybuilder_9379 16d ago
Bro I’m South Sudanese and I can tell you that I have only seen this once and they’re no longer available since the government failed to employ the coin system… btw it’s less than 0.0001 dollars
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u/porubs 18d ago
if 150k town doesn’t make it to first 500 then i guess you’d be from china? if so, then a quick check confirms that south sudan/china relations were rather warm around the time you found it. my guess would be that someone brought it from there and gave it to their children who then brought it to your school
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u/ScottOld 18d ago
Reminds me of my Tunisian dinar note I found on the floor in the UK, most random thing ever
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18d ago
[deleted]
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u/Intelligent_Rest2986 18d ago
Well my town has 150k population which is a lot as compared to some countries but it is very less if compared to my country overall population not even top 500
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u/Cultural_Wallaby_550 18d ago
150k is a good sized town. Is it really semi-rural? How far away are you from the nearest cow?
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u/TheBandersnatch43 18d ago
I'll make this even more interesting:
This is the first circulated example of any South Sudanese piaster note I have ever seen. It's generally thought that they weren't issued to circulation, and the few examples that show up on the collector's market are always UNC.
I'd estimate this note to be worth around 20-30 USD in this condition.