100 Drachmai

Bradbury Wilkinson printed this note during a period when Greece was still recovering from the 1897 war with the Ottoman Empire — a humiliating defeat that left the country under international financial supervision and forced the National Bank to operate under strict constraints imposed by the International Financial Control commission established in 1898. That the bank was still commissioning high-denomination notes from a prestigious London printer at the turn of the century signals an effort to project fiscal credibility it arguably did not yet possess.

The 100 Drachmai was a large sum for everyday Greeks in 1900. Notes of this value rarely left the hands of merchants and bankers, which accounts for the relatively low survival rate in any circulated grade.