A purported specimen of the new 1,000 yen bank note scheduled to be issued in November fetched a bid of more than 9.9 billion yen on an Internet auction site Thursday.
The item was later removed by the site's operator, Yahoo Japan Corp. It is unclear why it attracted such a high bid.
The item was very similar to test notes printed ahead of the distribution of actual bank notes, according to officials at the National Printing Bureau.