100 Lire Banca Sella

Banca Sella, founded in Biella in 1886 by the Sella family — descendants of Quintino Sella, the finance minister who imposed the corso forzoso during Italy's fiscal crisis of the 1860s — was one of a handful of private Italian regional banks still issuing fiduciary notes into the 1970s under a transitional legal framework that most assumed had already lapsed. These 100 Lire notes functioned as local circulating instruments in areas where small-denomination coinage had effectively disappeared from daily commerce, a genuine problem in Italy throughout that decade.

Marco Spada & C. S.p.A. was a Milan commercial printer, not a specialist security press. The reliance on guilloche as the primary security feature reflects the modest technical ceiling of the commission.