Mexico’s 50-peso note featuring Gorda the axolotl has become a sought-after collectible. Since its 2021 release — and after being named Note of the Year — roughly 12.9 million people have kept the bill, temporarily removing about $150 million of these notes from circulation. The design’s cultural resonance and the axolotl’s status as an endangered, historically significant species help explain the surge in demand.
Too Precious to Spend: Mexico’s Axolotl Banknote Hoarded by Millions
Mexico’s 50-peso note featuring Gorda the axolotl has become a sought-after collectible. Since its 2021 release — and after being named Note of the Year — roughly 12.9 million people have kept the bill, temporarily removing about $150 million of these notes from circulation. The design’s cultural resonance and the axolotl’s status as an endangered, historically significant species help explain the surge in demand.
05:02 PM, 11/21/2025Culture
Gorda, a long-lived axolotl kept at a Mexico City museum, became the face of Mexico’s redesigned 50-peso banknote when the bill entered circulation in 2021. The note — which won the International Bank Note Society’s Note of the Year — has proven so popular that millions of people are treating it like a collectible rather than spending it.
How widespread is the hoarding?
A recent Bank of Mexico report found that about 12.9 million Mexicans are holding on to that specific 50-peso bill. Collectively, these bills represented roughly $150 million temporarily removed from active circulation at the time of the survey. Some early-printed examples have even traded for as much as 100 times face value.
Why this note?
The phenomenon appears unique to the axolotl note: only about 12% of those who keep it said they behave the same way with other denominations. The most common reason cited is simple admiration for the design and what it represents culturally.
Axolotls: a national symbol with a fragile future
Axolotls are neotenic salamanders that retain larval features — including external gills — throughout life. Historically they lived in the waters of Lake Texcoco beneath the volcano Popocatépetl. When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan around AD 1300, they built their city on an island in that lake — an image echoed on the reverse of the banknote, inspired by a mural of the ancient city by Diego Rivera.
After the Spanish conquest, much of the lake system was drained and axolotls were largely confined to the canals and remaining waterways of Xochimilco, on the southern edge of modern Mexico City. Wild populations have since plummeted: by 2014 their density in Xochimilco was estimated at roughly 36 individuals per square kilometre.
Gorda and conservation awareness
Gorda is one of six axolotls housed at Axolotitlán, a museum in Mexico City devoted to the species. Now elderly and seldom displayed, she was brought out for the banknote photo so the public could connect with an animal many see as uniquely Mexican and increasingly at risk.
“We used to see souvenirs of jaguars and hummingbirds. Today we can see how the axolotl is becoming part of our culture, our everyday lives,” said Pamela Valencia, founder of Axolotitlán. “We cannot save something if we don’t know it exists.”
Whether the hoarding of the bill is driven mainly by aesthetic appeal, national pride, or growing concern for the axolotl’s survival, the phenomenon has had an unusual side effect: a piece of everyday currency helping to raise awareness about a threatened species.