old money is old

[afuna_archive]

While renovating my grandfather's old room, we found an envelope full of old paper money. It's weird to see just how much things have changed. I'll see if I can get a good image of them, and I'll try to get the modern equivalent as well ;)

There are bills from the time of four different presidents: Ramon Magsaysay, Carlo P. Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal, and Ferdinand Marcos. The weird thing is that the design reminds me more of US dollar bills than the modern incarnations. The text is even in English instead of in Filipino.

I wonder when the currency was redesigned? Also, anyone with a better grasp of history able to tell me how old these bills probably are (based on the presidents who signed them)?

Update:
Looking at the bills individually now, and I'm pretty sure that the redesign was done in Marcos' time. The money signed by all the other presidents is in the old style, and looks more like the dollar. All the bills with Marcos' name on them have had a facelift, and they are much closer to the modern version.

The old-style bills have this line running across the bottom: "This note is legal tender in the Philippines for all debts, public and private" (emphasis mine). Sound familiar to anyone? The Marcos bills have the same text translated into Filipino.

They all look like play money.

This is seriously, seriously cool.

Update 2:
I just found a 10-peso bill with Marcos' signature, which makes sense because he couldn't have started redesigning the money until he started his term, so he'd have needed to go with the old-style bills first.

I've also found a one-peso bill. Hahaha!

Front, compared to the modern $1 bill:



Back view:


The front and back of a PHP100 bill, so you can see how different the layout of the modern peso is:

Comments

[cindyg.livejournal.com]

I remember the one-peso bills. You could feel really rich, back in the day, with a wad of those in your wallet - especially during Christmas, when I was a child!

I also remember the two-peso bills, and the five-peso bills, not to mention the ten-peso bills. Wah! I was so upset when they changed things into coins...even though coins wear better than bills.

::squish::

[afuna]

Di ko naabutan talaga ang one-peso bill *grin* It feels to see a one-peso bill, though, now that the purchasing power of the peso has gone way waay down.

Two-peso bill... that was blue, right? And coins just feel so much cheaper than bills, even though I suspect they're more expensive to make.

[ciaran-h.livejournal.com]

What do the government pay the minters in?

(random question, just popped into my head, sorry)

[afuna]

Pay... the minters? I'm afraid my brain is not parsing the question.

[ciaran-h.livejournal.com]

Well, if something is more expensive than something else to make, then that implies that money is involved. If the minters mint the currency for the government to distribute, how do the minters get paid? Do they just keep some of the money that they mint?

[afuna]

Oh, oh! :) I think it's the government that does the actual minting, does it?