Micronational Banknote Museum

WELCOME TO THE ONLINE

"A micronation is a political entity whose representatives claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by any sovereign state. Micronations are classified separately from de facto states and quasi-states; they are also not considered to be autonomous or self-governing as they lack the legal basis in international law for their existence. The activities of micronations are almost always trivial enough to be ignored rather than disputed by the established nations whose territory they claim - referred to in micronationalism as 'macronations'. Several micronations have issued coins, flags, postage stamps, passports, medals and other state-related items, some as a source of revenue. Motivations for the creation of micronations include theoretical experimentation, political protest, artistic expression, personal entertainment and the conduct of criminal activity" (From Wikipedia).

Welcome to the online Micronational Banknote Museum! This website is a gallery of my entire collection of micronational banknotes along with stories about these micronations and their banknotes. For me, the idea of collecting micronational banknotes all started with an accidental encounter in 2011. Still a school pupil, I was browsing through an online auction site, searching for an Australian World Expo '88 novelty note. I had been collecting world banknotes for a while - wandering to the coin shops nearby once in a while and struggling to find something special in a dozen albums full of world banknotes - but I was still relatively new to online numismatic markets because of my young age at the time. Despite this, it did not take me too long to locate the banknote that I wanted. As I scrolled down the page and was ready to pay, however, my eyes were immediately drawn by a related item that I had never seen in those coins shops before: a $1 note from Hutt River Province. Having clicked the Buy-it-Now button without any hesitation, I then had my first micronational banknote secured in collection. Admittedly, I had been aware of the term "micronation" from the Internet, but it was my first time being so close to a micronation-related item in reality, not as a two-dimensional image on my computer. The banknote itself was, honestly speaking, just like what I had imagined - It was much less professional than those "macronational" banknotes I had been acquainted with. There was, nonetheless, something magical about this one that distinguished itself from other mass-produced "normal" banknotes - perhaps the letterpressed serial number that one rarely saw on today's banknotes, or the geometrically complex yet still monochrome guilloché - something anachronistic that revealed to me its uniqueness, which then intrigued me and guided me toward this field of collection.

A few years after I had been collecting these types of banknotes, it occurred to me that I could catalog my entire collection and present it as an online archive. Inspired by MicroMusée de la Philatélie Micronationaliste of the Anacratic Republic of Padrhom and Finanzmuseum Gartenspartenkirchen of the Free State of Fuchsen, I created this banknote-oriented micronational museum in 2017, first on Facebook and now here on Neocities, which serves not only as my personal catalog but also for the sake of the vast micronational community that might find its content helpful. With the assistance from many micronationalists and collectors around the globe, I am able to include in this museum not only banknotes from the best-known micronations, but also various rare ones from micronations that existed only for a very brief period of time. In many cases, their names cannot be found elsewhere on the Internet anymore because of such ephemerality. With the opening of this online museum, I hope to at least document some of these micronations as well as their wonderful creations, so that their existence will not easily fall into oblivion.

Micronations featured in this museum are classified based on their physical location as shown on the sidebar. When you click on a continent listed under "Catalog", you will be directed to a separate page listing all micronations from this continent, and from there you can proceed to the micronation you are looking for - Dependencies, constituent parts, and direct predecessors to another micronation are all marked in italics. Normally, only the front side of each banknote is being displayed, while the back side is presented only when another note shares a similar front design. In addition, each type of banknote is assigned a unique index number (e.g. HUT4) for the sake of identification. Due to an abundance of images displayed on this site, please right-click on the page and select "Reload Frame" if any of the images are not shown correctly, though some banknotes are deliberately hidden from the website due to privacy or safety concerns. Please also be advised that this website is still under active construction - When necessary, feel free to visit the alternative Facebook page as a mirror site by clicking the "Old Site" button on the left. All banknotes displayed in this online museum are from my personal collection, therefore not for sale.

The museum currently has 3041 banknotes from 183 micronations.