100 Rupees

The Union of Burma came into existence on 4 January 1948, just days after independence from Britain, and this note belongs to the first sovereign issue — a transitional series that retained the rupee as the unit of account before Burma eventually moved to the kyat in 1952. De La Rue was the natural choice for a newly independent government without its own printing infrastructure, a pattern repeated across dozens of former British territories in this period.

Pick 37 is notably scarce in high grades. The tropical climate of Burma was brutal on circulating paper, and wartime disruption to banking infrastructure had already conditioned much of the population toward hoarding or rapid disposal of large-denomination notes rather than careful preservation.