100 Kurush

The Imperial Ottoman Bank — formally chartered in 1863 as a joint Anglo-French venture with Ottoman state backing — issued this note during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, one of the most financially devastating conflicts in the empire's late history. Military expenditure gutted reserves, and paper emissions from the Bank during this period were backed by increasingly thin guarantees.

Pick 53 is among the scarcest of the wartime issues. The combination of high nominal value, limited printing run, and the chaos of the war's aftermath meant few survived in any condition.