100 Afghanis

Bradbury Wilkinson printed this series for the Bank of Afghanistan during a period when the country was navigating careful neutrality — Afghanistan stayed out of the Second World War, but the conflict disrupted trade routes and put pressure on the domestic economy in ways that made reliable paper currency more politically important than usual. The notes were engraved and printed in London, then shipped to Kabul for issue, a supply arrangement that became increasingly complicated after 1939.

Pick 26 spans a seven-year window, and dating individual examples within that range is not straightforward — the series shows little typographic variation between early and late printings.