Notes on collecting graded banknotes

Quang Duy, Vietnam Numismatics #3 (04-2018), p.22-23

Over the past two years, collectors have been buzzing about collecting graded banknotes. This practice may seem foreign to local collectors, who have long focused on simply acquiring beautiful notes for their collections based on standard catalogues. Any missing note had to be found at all costs to fill the empty spaces in the collection. As collections expanded and neared completion, collectors eventually turned their attention toward upgrading to higher-quality notes. Since there are many different ideas of what beauty is, the fairest method is to grade the banknotes.

In fact, this trend began in the United States in the late 1980s, when American companies invented a new way to extract money from collectors by subdividing the quality of collectibles into grades, first with coins and then with banknotes. It spread throughout the world and has continued to the present day. To better understand this practice, we will discuss the grading of banknotes.

Graded banknotes are typically divided into multiple grades, as follows: