0 Euro - Elisabeth of Austria Sissi

The 0 Euro souvenir note program, administered under license from the European Central Bank, has produced hundreds of tourist-market issues since its commercial launch around 2015. Oberthur Fiduciaire prints the entire series to genuine banknote specification — same security paper, same intaglio printing — which is precisely the point: collectors are buying a legally worthless note that is physically indistinguishable in production quality from circulating currency.

Elisabeth of Austria, the Bavarian-born Empress who became an enduring cult figure across Central Europe, is a predictable but commercially reliable subject. Her assassination in Geneva in 1898 by the anarchist Luigi Lucheni remains one of the more historically bizarre events of the fin-de-siècle — stabbed with a sharpened needle file, she initially didn't realize she had been fatally wounded.