Mongolia

The tögrög has been Mongolia's unit of account since 1925, but this one-tögrög note is part of the country's first genuinely independent coinage of the modern era, the 1993 series issued by a Mongolbank newly separated from the state treasury after the fall of communism. The whole series was printed by Thomas De La Rue in London and, unlike the Soviet-era tögrög that bore Sükhbaatar and socialist scenes, the smallest notes lean entirely on traditional and religious iconography.

This note carries no portrait. Its design centres on an Arslan — the lion-like temple guardian of Mongolian and wider Buddhist tradition — set in a roundel, with the Soyombo emblem and the vertical Mongolian script completing a wholly national face. Printed vertically like the möngö fractions, it was among the first denominations to be made meaningless by the inflation of the 1990s, and single tögrög notes now circulate mainly as keepsakes and in collectors' sets.