50 Möngö, Mongolbank

A möngö is one-hundredth of a tögrög, and this little green note is from the first currency independent Mongolia issued after communism. Mongolbank, the central bank, was reconstituted in 1991 as the country moved from a Soviet-style single-bank system to a market economy, and its 1993 series — tögrög notes and these tiny möngö fractions — was printed by Thomas De La Rue in London.

The design is entirely national: the Soyombo, the columnar emblem of Mongolian sovereignty that stands at the hoist of the flag, appears with the traditional vertical Mongolian script on one side and Cyrillic on the other, and both faces carry two riders of the Naadam horse race — one of the "three manly sports." The note is printed vertically, each face read as a portrait. Inflation soon made the möngö denominations pointless, and they survive mostly unspent.