Burundi 500, 1000 and 2000 francs, 2015 (Purchase from eBay)

500 francs - Crocodile, arms, flag, coffee branch

1000 francs - Bird, arms, flag, cattle

2000 francs - Antelope, arms, flag, pineapple

500 francs - Outline of Burundi, boat on Lake Tanganiyka

1000 francs - Outline of Burundi, banana trees

2000 francs - Outline of Burundi, fieldwork

Nicaragua NEW 10, 20 and 50 cordobas, 2015 (Purchase from eBay)

10 cordobas - Puerto Salvador Allende, Managua

20 cordobas - Moravian church, Laguna de Perlas 

50 cordobas - Artisan Market, Masaya

10 cordobas - La Vaquita (Patron Saint festivities of Managua)

20 cordobas - Mayo Ya Festival

50 cordobas - Folkloristic ballet

French Pacific Territories 1000 francs (Swap with Jerome Deschamps, France)

Singapore 50 dollars, 2015 (Thanks to Seung Young Oh, South Korea)

Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore’s first Prime Minister, shouting “Merdeka!” – the cry of independence struggle) children, arms, President Yusof bin Ishak

Modern buildings, bridge and four kayaks in Punggol New Town soldiers marching during First National Day Parade 1966

Singapore 10 dollars "50 years of Nation building", 2015 (Thanks to Seung Young Oh, South Korea)

Tun Yusof bin Ishak (Jawi: يوسف بن اسحاق ;/ˈjʊsɒf bɪn ˈɪs.hɑːk/ YUUSS-off bin ISS-hahk; DUT (First Class), SMN 12 August 1910 – 23 November 1970) was a Singaporean politician and was the first President of Singapore, serving from 1965 to 1970. His portrait appears on the Singapore Portrait Series currency notes introduced in 1999.

"Caring Community, Active Citizenry" 

women and man with shovel planting tree; man and woman visiting elderly woman; women with rollers and man with brush painting walls and window trim 

"Strong Families" 

man reading book to child; man, woman and child riding tandem bicycle; family seated with 50th Anniversary cake; man and woman fixing epaulettes on soldier’s uniform 

"Safe and Secure" 

Citizens consulting brochure with police officers; soldier with binoculars; soldier with clenched hand over heart; woman carrying duffle bag; pilot in flight suit; firefighter with walkie talkie; fighter jets 

"Regardless of race, language or religion ..." 

boys and girls 

"Opportunities for All" 

soccer coach and players; construction worker with blueprint; dancer; scientist with beakers and test tubes; chef wearing toque stirring wok, boy in wheelchair and girls; financial trader with keyboard and stock charts on monitors; teacher pointing to Singapore on globe

Fantasy issues for swap

Portugal 2.000 escudo 2000 (Swap with Raul Loureiro, Portugal!)

Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1451 – 29 May 1500), a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, reaching the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, the first European known to have done so. 

Bartolomeu Dias was a Knight of the royal court, superintendent of the royal warehouses, and sailing-master of the man-of-war, São Cristóvão (Saint Christopher). King John II of Portugal appointed him, on 10 October 1487, to head an expedition to sail around the southern tip of Africa in the hope of finding a trade route to India. Dias was also charged with searching for the lands ruled by Prester John, who was a fabled Christian priest and ruler.

Dias' ship São Cristóvão was piloted by Pêro de Alenquer. A second caravel, the São Pantaleão, was commanded by João Infante and piloted by Álvaro Martins. Dias' brother Pêro Dias was the captain of the square-rigged support ship with João de Santiago as pilot. The expedition sailed south along the West coast of Africa. Extra provisions were picked up on the way at the Portuguese fortress of São Jorge de Mina on the Gold Coast. After having sailed past Angola, Dias reached the Golfo da Conceicão (Walvis Bay) by December. Continuing south, he discovered first Angra dos Ilheus, being hit, then, by a violent storm. Thirteen days later, from the open ocean, he searched the coast again to the east, discovering and using the westerlies winds - the ocean gyre, but finding just ocean. Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope at a considerable distance to the west and southwest, he turned towards the east, and taking advantage of the winds of Antarctica that blow strongly in the South Atlantic, he sailed northeast. After 30 days without seeing land, he entered what he named Aguada de São Brás (Bay of Saint Blaise)—later renamed Mossel Bay—on 4 February 1488. Dias's expedition reached its furthest point on 12 March 1488 when they anchored at Kwaaihoek, near the mouth of the Bushman's River, where a padrão—the Padrão de São Gregório—was erected before turning back. Dias wanted to continue sailing to India, but he was forced to turn back when his crew refused to go further. It was only on the return voyage that he actually discovered the Cape of Good Hope, in May 1488. Dias returned to Lisbon in December of that year, after an absence of sixteen months.[citation needed] The discovery of the passage around southern Africa was significant because, for the first time, Europeans realized they could trade directly with India and the other parts of Asia, bypassing the overland route through the Middle East, with its expensive middlemen. The official report of the expedition has been lost.[citation needed] Bartolomeu Dias originally named the Cape of Good Hope the "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed (by King John II of Portugal) the Cape of Good Hope (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because it represented the opening of a route to the east. 

After these early attempts, the Portuguese took a decade-long break from Indian Ocean exploration. During that hiatus, it is likely that they received valuable information from a secret agent, Pêro da Covilhã, who had been sent overland to India and returned with reports useful to their navigators.Using his experience with explorative travel, Dias helped in the construction of the São Gabriel and its sister ship, the São Rafael that were used by Vasco da Gama to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope and continue the route to India. Dias only participated in the first leg of Gama's voyage, until the Cape Verde Islands. He was then one of the captains of the second Indian expedition, headed by Pedro Álvares Cabral. This flotilla first reached the coast of Brazil, landing there in 1500, and then continued eastwards to India. Dias perished near the Cape of Good Hope that he presciently had named Cape of Storms. Four ships encountered a huge storm off the cape and were lost, including Dias', on 29 May 1500. A shipwreck found in 2008 by the Namdeb Diamond Corporation off Namibia was at first thought to be Dias' ship; however, recovered coins come from a later time.

 

Portugal 1.000 escudo 2000

Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467 or 1468 – c. 1520) was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil. Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. While details of Cabral's early life are unclear, it is known that he came from a minor noble family and received a good education. He was appointed to head an expedition to India in 1500, following Vasco da Gama's newly opened route around Africa. The object of the undertaking was to return with valuable spices and to establish trade relations in India—bypassing the monopoly on the spice trade then in the hands of Arab, Turkish and Italian merchants. Although the previous expedition of Vasco da Gama to India, on its sea route, recorded signs of land west of the southern Atlantic Ocean (in 1497), Cabral is regarded as the first captain who ever touched four continents, leading the first expedition that united Europe, Africa, America, and Asia.

His fleet of 13 ships sailed far into the western Atlantic Ocean, perhaps intentionally, where he made landfall on what he initially assumed to be a large island. As the new land was within the Portuguese sphere according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, Cabral claimed it for the Portuguese Crown. He explored the coast, realizing that the large land mass was probably a continent, and dispatched a ship to notify King Manuel I of the new territory. The continent was South America, and the land he had claimed for Portugal later came to be known as Brazil. The fleet reprovisioned and then turned eastward to resume the journey to India. 

A storm in the southern Atlantic caused the loss of several ships, and the six remaining ships eventually rendezvoused in the Mozambique Channel before proceeding to Calicut in India. Cabral was originally successful in negotiating trading rights, but Arab merchants saw Portugal's venture as a threat to their monopoly and stirred up an attack by both Muslims and Hindus on the Portuguese entrepôt. The Portuguese sustained many casualties and their facilities were destroyed. Cabral took vengeance by looting and burning the Arab fleet and then bombarded the city in retaliation for its ruler having failed to explain the unexpected attack. From Calicut the expedition sailed to the Kingdom of Cochin, another Indian city-state, where Cabral befriended its ruler and loaded his ships with coveted spices before returning to Europe. Despite the loss of human lives and ships, Cabral's voyage was deemed a success upon his return to Portugal. The extraordinary profits resulting from the sale of the spices bolstered the Portuguese Crown's finances and helped lay the foundation of a Portuguese Empire that would stretch from the Americas to the Far East.

Cabral was later passed over, possibly as a result of a quarrel with Manuel I, when a new fleet was assembled to establish a more robust presence in India. Having lost favor with the King, he retired to a private life of which few records survive. His accomplishments slipped mostly into obscurity for more than 300 years. Decades after Brazil's independence from Portugal in the 19th century, Cabral's reputation began to be rehabilitated by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil. Historians have long argued whether Cabral was Brazil's discoverer, and whether the discovery was accidental or intentional. The first question has been settled by the observation that the few, cursory encounters by explorers before him were barely noticed at the time and contributed nothing to the future development and history of the land which would become Brazil, the sole Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. On the second question, no definite consensus has been formed, and the intentional discovery hypothesis lacks solid proof. Nevertheless, although he was overshadowed by contemporary explorers, Cabral today is regarded as a major figure of the Age of Discovery.

Portugal 500 escudo 2000

João de Barros (1496 – 20 October 1570), called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia ("Decades of Asia"), a history of the Portuguese in India, Asia, and southeast Africa. 

Educated in the palace of Manuel I of Portugal, he composed, at the age of twenty, a romance of chivalry, the Chronicle of the Emperor Clarimundo, in which he is said to have had the assistance of Prince John (afterwards King John III).  Upon ascending the throne, he awarded Barros the captaincy of the fortress of St George of Elmina, to which he proceeded in 1522. In 1525, he obtained the post of treasurer of the India House, which he held until 1528. 

To escape from an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1530 Barros moved from Lisbon to his country house near Pombal, where he finished a moral dialogue, Rho pica Pneuma, which was cheered by Juan Luís Vives. On his return to Lisbon in 1532 the king appointed Barros factor (agent) of the "Casa da Índia e da Mina" (House of India and Mina)— a position of great responsibility and importance at a time when Lisbon was the European center for the trade of the East. Barros proved a good administrator, displaying great industry and an honesty rare at the time, with the result that he made little profit compared to his predecessors, who had amassed fortunes. 

At this time, John III, wishing to attract settlers to Brazil, divided it into captaincies and attributed to Barros that of Maranhão. Barros with two partners, prepared an armada of ten vessels, carrying nine hundred men each, which set sail in 1539. Owing to the ignorance of the pilots, the whole fleet was shipwrecked, which entailed serious financial loss to Barros. As a gesture of goodwill, Barros subsequently paid the debts of those who had perished in the expedition. During these years he had continued his studies in his leisure hours, and shortly after the Brazilian disaster he offered to write a history of the Portuguese in India, the Décadas da Ásia, which the king accepted. He began work forthwith, but, before printing the first part, he published a Portuguese grammar (1539)[1] and some further moral Dialogues. 

The first of the Décadas da Ásia ("Decades of Asia") appeared in 1552, and its reception was such that the king straightway charged Barros to write a chronicle of King Manuel. His many occupations, however, prevented him from undertaking this book, which was finally composed by Damião de Góis. The second Decade came out in 1553 and the third in 1563, but the fourth and final one was not published until 1615, long after the author’s death. His Decades contain the early history of the Portuguese in India and Asia and reveal careful study of Eastern historians and geographers, as well as of the records of his own country. They are distinguished by clearness of exposition and orderly arrangement. They are also lively accounts, for example describing the king of Viantana's killing of the Portuguese ambassadors to Malacca with boiling water and then throwing their bodies to the dogs. Diogo de Couto continued the Décadas, adding nine more, and a modern edition of the whole appeared in Lisbon in 14 vols. in 1778—1788 as Da Asia de João de Barros, dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente. The edition is accompanied by a volume containing a life of Barros by the historian Manoel Severim de Faria and a copious index of all the Decades. In January 1568 Barros retired from his remunerative appointment at the India House, receiving the rank of fidalgo together with a pension and other pecuniary emoluments from King Sebastian, and died on 20 October 1570.

 

Iceland 1.000 kronur

 Brynjólfur Sveinsson (14 September 1605 – 5 August 1675) served as the Lutheran Bishop of the see of Skálholt in Iceland. His main influence has been on modern knowledge of Old Norse literature. Brynjólfur is also known for his support of the career of the Icelandic poet and hymn writer Hallgrímur Pétursson. Brynjólfur Sveinsson is currently pictured on the Icelandic 1000 krónur bill.

Brynjólfur Sveinsson was born in Önundarfjörður in the Westfjords of northwestern Iceland. He studied at the University of Copenhagen 1624-1629 and became Provost of Roskilde University 1632-1638. In 1643, he named the collection of Old Norse mythological and heroic poems Edda. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr fróði, but the scholarly consensus is that whoever wrote the Eddic poems, whether in the sense of being the compiler or the poet, it could not have been Sæmundr. It is believed that the manuscript has multiple authorship from over a long span of time. 

In 1650 King Frederick the Third appointed Bishop Brynjólfur to succeed the late Stephanius as Royal Danish Historian. He declined the post but promised the king to do what he could to collect manuscripts in Iceland. One of his first acts was to request all people residing in his diocese to turn over to the King any old manuscripts, either an original or a copy, as a gift or for a price. 

Among the most monumental of the Icelandic manuscripts thus collected is the Flateyjarbók, which was secured only after a personal visit to the owner from Brynjólfur. Jon Finnsson (Jóni Finnssyni) of Flatey, Breiðafjörður, who owned the manuscript, was initially unwilling to give up his precious heirloom. After a personal visit and persuasion from Bishop Brynjólfur, Finnsson gave up the valuable manuscript. The manuscript was given to King Frederick III in 1656, and placed in the Royal Library of Copenhagen.