1000 Kronen

The Oesterreichisch-ungarische Bank's 1000 Kronen of 1918 was issued in the final weeks of a dissolving empire. When the Austro-Hungarian state collapsed in November 1918, the successor states — Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Austria itself — each scrambled to distinguish their share of the circulating note supply. Most did so by overprinting or perforating existing notes; unmodified examples like this one were frequently declared invalid and called in almost immediately after armistice.

Printed by the Staatsdruckerei in Vienna, this was effectively a wartime emergency issue — the 1918 Kronen series was produced under material shortages that affected paper quality, and noted collectors have long flagged increased incidence of foxing in poorly stored examples of this specific type.