10 Liri

Malta's Central Bank was established only in 1968, replacing the Currency Board that had issued notes under British authority. This 1973 note belongs to the bank's first independent series — a period when the institution was still finding its administrative footing, and note design choices were heavily influenced by continuity with the pre-independence aesthetic rather than any sharp break from it.

De La Rue's involvement here is unremarkable in itself; they printed much of Malta's paper across successive governments. What anchors the P#33 in collector interest is the relative brevity of the series run before the redesigned liri notes of the late 1970s superseded it.