The World's Oldest Surviving Paper Money

American Numismatic Society - In 1923, Dr. Richard Ehrenfeld of Vienna wrote to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to announce that he had in his possession the oldest bank note in existence, a one kwan (or guan) issue of the Ming dynasty from about the year 1375, discovered in 1888 during the demolition of an old house in Beijing and acquired by his father, paper money collector Adolf Ehrenfeld. Richard had inherited the note and, suspecting that "European collectors or Museums nowadays have not the money to acquire so valuable an object," he turned to America instead, looking to part with it "should a price approximate to the value of the note be offered me," a figure he put at about fifty thousand dollars (roughly one million dollars today).

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