Currency today : Venezuela 01

When you plan to Visit south / latin America, Venezuela might not be the first country that comes into your mind for touristic reasons - however there is a lot to see as well!
But Venezuela is definitely a very intersting country to visit, for banknote collectors.
And this for various reasons.
First and for all, the circulating money, is for 99 % consisting out of bank notes.
Although there are some coins still in circulation, the value is so low, that they are hardly used.
From the coins I have in my collection, only few I got back as change. All the others were 'found' on the floor of subway, in public phone boxes or even just on the street.

After the devaluation of the bolivar in 2007, 6 new notes came into circulation.
2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 bolivares fuertes (strong bolivars) - all notes are very nice, good quality printing, beautiful design, .... although the actual value is quite low, the printing is outstanding, but I'll come back to that point later on.

A third reason to collect the notes, is that the notes were printed on several dates.
So far there are 10 different printing dates - and although not all notes are confirmed to be printed each time, it gives the possibility of 10 times 6 notes = 60 different banknotes in circulation.

And the best of all... the full (expected) set of 60 notes represent in total 1122 bolivares (10 times : 100 + 50 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 2). Depending on the exchange rate this represents more or less 1.25 USD!
Reason enough to start hunting the notes.

Overview all notes of Venezuela

In my later reports, I will go into detail for each note and the know issues of the printing dates.

For a quick overview, here are the 10 printing dates so far :

Issue - printing date
I    -    20 marzo de 2007 (20 March 2007) - A
II   -    24 mayo de 2007 (24 May 2007) - A
III  -    19 dicembre de 2008 (19 December 2008) - B
IV  -    3 septembre de 2009 (3 September 2009) - C
V   -    3 febrero de 2011 (3 February 2011) - D
VI  -   31 enero de 2012 (31 January 2012) - D
VII -   27 dicembre de 2012 (27 December 2012) - D
VIII -  29 octubre de 2013 (29 October 2013) - E
IX   -  19 agosto de 2014 (19 August 2014) - D
X    -   23 junio de 2015 (23 June 2015) - F

Regarding the signatures, 6 combinations of signatures can be distinguished:
Sign A :

combination A : 2007 (I and II)

Sign B :

combination B : 2008 (III)

Sign C :

combination C : 2009 (IV)

Sign D :

combination D : 2011, 2012 and 2014 (V, VI, VII and IX)

Sign E :

combination E : 2013 (VIII)

Sign F :

combination F : 2015 (X)

So far the basic information. More in detail in the following posts.