10 Phoenix

Greece's phoenix was the country's first currency, introduced by Ioannis Kapodistrias in 1828 and named deliberately — a newly independent nation rising from Ottoman rule. The National Bank Commission that issued this note was not a central bank in any modern sense but a provisional administrative body operating during an extraordinarily unstable period, with the Greek state barely three years out from the formal recognition of independence at the London Protocol of 1830.

Kapodistrias was assassinated in October 1831, the same year this note circulated. The phoenix denomination itself survived him by only a few years, replaced by the drachma in 1833 under the Bavarian regency of King Otto.