The Currency BazaarReal value, not the viral one
₹500 note value — is it really ₹3 lakh?
The ₹500 note is the one where the honest answer surprises people in both directions at once: the old note is not money any more, and it is also not worthless.
An old ₹500 note of the series withdrawn on 8 November 2016 is not legal tender — it cannot be spent or deposited, and the exchange window closed years ago. Under the Specified Bank Notes Act, 2017 you may keep up to ten of the old ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes, but you may not sell, buy or hand them on, so this page gives no collector price for them. A current ₹500 note is worth ₹500.
The ₹500 note in particular
The ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes of every series in use until then stopped being legal tender at midnight on 8 November 2016. The windows to deposit or exchange them are long closed. No shop has to accept one, no bank will convert one, and nobody can restore that — which is worth stating plainly, because a large part of the fraud around this denomination consists of offering to do exactly that for a fee.
What does not remain is a market. Under the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Act, 2017 a person may keep up to ten of these old notes in total, but may not sell, buy or hand one on — whatever its signature, serial or condition. So this page quotes no collector range for them, and anyone offering to buy one is asking you to break that law.
The current ₹500 note is ordinary money and worth five hundred rupees. The completed sales further down are notes with special serial numbers, nearly all of them from the current series; they say nothing about a note withdrawn in 2016, which may not be sold at all. If somebody has told you that a particular current note is worth far more because of its number, ask them to buy it at that price without you sending anything first. That question ends the conversation every time.
What these actually sold for
Completed sales recorded at independent dealers — not asking prices. Each of these is a specific variety of the 500 rupee note.
- ₹500 note — fancy serial number · Governor Sanjay Malhotra — ₹799 (15 sales)
← What Indian banknotes are really worth
Selling your ₹500 note anyway?
A real buyer never asks you for money — not a registration fee, not customs clearance, not GST, not a refundable deposit. Any buyer or “agent” who asks you to pay is running a fraud. Here the whole sale price stays yours: we take no commission on it.
List your ₹500 note