100 Lire Banca Industriale Gallaratese

Banca Industriale Gallaratese was a small regional institution based in Gallarate, in the Varese province of Lombardy. These 100 Lire notes were emergency fiduciary scrip — locally produced to substitute for the small-denomination coin shortage that plagued Italy through the mid-1970s, when rampant inflation caused metal coins to disappear from circulation almost entirely. The phenomenon was widespread enough that Italian merchants, banks, cooperatives, and even telephone companies issued their own paper substitutes, creating a patchwork of quasi-currency that the Banca d'Italia ultimately moved to suppress.

Locally printed issues from smaller provincial banks like this one had extremely limited geographic reach and short operational lifespans, which kept surviving quantities low.