10 Möngö, Mongolbank

A möngö is one-hundredth of a tögrög, and this pink note is the lowest denomination of the first currency independent Mongolia issued after seventy years in the Soviet orbit. Mongolbank was reconstituted as the central bank in 1991, and in 1993 it put out a full family of notes — tiny möngö fractions through the tögrög — all printed by Thomas De La Rue in London and designed around purely national imagery rather than the old socialist motifs.

Like the rest of the little möngö notes, it is printed vertically and read as a portrait. The Soyombo emblem stands on one side with the traditional vertical Mongolian script, and the other face carries a mounted Naadam archer drawing the bow — archery being one of the "three manly sports" celebrated at the midsummer Naadam festival alongside wrestling and horse racing. Runaway inflation in the mid-1990s made a hundredth of a tögrög worthless almost at once, so the möngö were barely used and survive mostly crisp and unspent.