1 Ban

Romania's 1953 currency reform was a brutal redenomination that wiped out savings held in the old leu at punishing exchange rates — 20 old lei to 1 new, with household holdings above modest thresholds exchanged at ratios as unfavorable as 100-to-1. The ban denominations introduced that year were the fractional units of this entirely new monetary architecture imposed under Soviet-aligned economic restructuring.

The KM#81.2 designation distinguishes this from the near-identical 81.1 variety by a difference in the reverse die spacing.