1 Zaïre

Giesecke & Devrient printed this series throughout a period of acute instability for Mobutu Sese Seko's regime — the Zaïre had been introduced in 1967 at parity with the US dollar, but by the late 1970s, chronic inflation had eroded that equivalence entirely. The long print run spanning 1972 to 1980 reflects not stable demand but repeated reissues as purchasing power collapsed.

Pick 18 is common in circulated grades; high-grade examples with clean watermark registration are harder to source than the price guides typically suggest.